Burn
by Homeslice
Summary: So you'll never have to bleed. [Burn. Burn through snakes and spiders and all the spiteful things they'd ever said.] ItachixSasuke ShisuixItachi, Minor KakuzuxHidan OrochimaruxSasori SasorixDeidara [Dedicated to Narroch]
1. Jim Crow

Xxx

When we concentrate solely on one motion after another, our actions weather down into the technicalities. We focus less on our wants than on our needs, and eventually they begin building until one craves after their lusts almost as much as their survival. What most don't realize is that the details matter almost as much as the solid facts; the shinobi were known for their trust in the law. And though relationships during times of war were forbidden, most didn't bother at all with the rules. Laws sometimes overcame orders, and when that happened, they knew they were no better than anyone else.

Xxx

We say we've almost made it, and realize we're all alone in our statement. Proud we stand, chest deflated, if not the tiniest bit, broad shoulders straight as we were told to have them, stretched a few inches over the wide horizon, in the hopes that the upturn of the sun rising would wash away the slivers of doubt dug up to fit over our skins. Chest heaves, as breathless as we'll ever be, and with each breath comes the realization of failure at the pressure tightening in our lungs. We rise over the ground, and acknowledge we're falling just as quickly.

We've worked hard, but not hard enough, because with perfection comes the hope that you could get just a little bet perfecter, a little bit worthier to praise. We dwindle in our footsteps across the forest floor to watch the leaves fall with a grace we wanted to achieve, wanted to believe. It was Autumn, the October months passing away into November and the trees giving just a little bit more, dieing just a little bit more, in a system we've yet to come across. We're young yet, still dazzled by the sight of a blue moon, still tucking the inspiration in your pocket a little bit deeper, hoping, praying, knowing we'll be better. If moon's could blossom in Konoha twice in time, you believe it'll be just as simple to pull down the stars. Maybe we wanted a little bit more than that, maybe we wanted to go just a little bit farther, but it still won't be far enough.

We rise over the ground, and we're falling just as quickly.

Xxx

Shisui was a man, ironically enough, who, mindless of the copying techniques of the sharingan he possessed, could not be plagerized as easily. Shisui, Itachi discovered, liked to differenciate himself from anything and everything: his clan, his classmates, his friends, and even his name. Itachi discovered his cousin's habits whenever the occasion came of offering the boy a glass of water, or even to join him by the lake. Shisui would constantly swirl the water in his cup, tap his fingers against the sides to force the liquid into tremors, kick his feet against the surface of the lakes and sometimes jump in himself. Sasuke, Itachi remembered particularly clear, found it funny how his cousin would completely forget treading the water and decide upon any method of creating whirlwinds and waves and droplets spattered against the sides of the dock, swimming back and forth, sideways, diving, leaping, skidding, sometimes outright running across the tops to create deep trenches of where his feet had sunk during his pauses.

They were spread out carelessly, if not as careful as they always were, across the hilltop, arms stretched as wide as their shoulders over the sunset. The grass was drying into a dark yellow, stringy and brittle as their souls, and Sasuke was uprooting individual blades between his short, pale fingers. Fugaku had raised an almost judging eyebrow at the lack of their grace, although Mikoto had rushed to her son's side to assure her husband they would grow into slender, boney fingers. Uchiha fingers. Itachi couldn't help but compare Sasuke with some sort of god, an angel of death sitting aboard the hill as if he owned it, which Itachi didn't doubt he did. The way he sharply wrapped the grass around his hands and -killed them off- tugged with a child's intent of murder, (always curious which designs who's blood would make, and if it'd be good enough for their liking) looked as if he were simply another shinobi with kunai slipped in between his fingers. Uchiha fingers. Fingers not quite long and slender, not quite good enough for Fugaku or Shisui or Itachi, fingers too short and stiff to hold any blade, though Itachi had started training three years prior Sasuke's own age.

A late bloomer-that's what he was. How _shameful_.

Mikoto had convinced Shisui, more or less so for Itachi, to take Sasuke along. It was a good experience, staying in the company of killers, because even though Mikoto would not admit it through all of her maternal insticts that seemed to dominate her now-a-days, (but never when Itachi was a child) Sasuke just wasn't quite set out to be one, and she wanted to shape him while she still could, before the water (Shisui-'Still Water') could wash out from beneath his toes and he'd get a chance to plant his feet firmly to the spot. Itachi noticed that Sasuke had been eight since July, and that he probably wasn't just a late bloomer anymore. Maybe next he would be a _very _late bloomer, and then a **very **late bloomer, and then if he ever even made it that far Fugaku (and Itachi too, for sure) would slay him with his own bare hands and not bother honoring him with a katana.

But, Itachi thought with slight amusement, he could just be over annalyzing. He tended to do that a lot. Wasn't that, no, what Shisui had said?

-Late bloomer. How _shameful. _

Sasuke had strung the yellowed blades together into a circlet, and Shisui had grinned before placing it on Sasuke's head. It looked oddly like mustard against his hair, a perfect ring of it, for Sasuke had been careful and patient and not made a cut too big or a blade too long or pushed out too far. For someone with stubby, ungraceful fingers, Itachi decided, Sasuke could be dangerously...calculating. Numerous times had he corrected Mikoto in the kitchen, 'That's a tad too much flour.', 'You should stir slower; the flavor mixes in better.', or 'Just a little bit more and-Yup!'. Itachi remembered when Sasuke had been being taught to write in kanji, he had spent days in his room, simply sitting at his desk and memorizing every angle, curve, and slope of the designs, making his practice sheets look suspiciously like the book's instead of forming his own handstyle. Fugaku had even gone as far as to accusing Sasuke of cutting the signs from the booklet, but Itachi had stepped in and informed his father that he had seen Sasuke do it. For some reason, Fugaku had looked almost amused, giving a (praising, laughing, mocking) glance at his younger son before continueing his dinner ritual. (Bite, chew, swallow, drink, swallow, bite...)

Shisui had repositioned himself to face Itachi, glance hardly curious at Itachi's blank (if not just a little, tiny bit nostalgic) look. The Uchiha had never been known to wear his heart on his sleeve, almost anti-emotional, (almost exactly opposite of Sasuke) and Shisui never asked him why or what he thought of. Their conversations were normally one-sided, the same with Itachi and Sasuke's conversations, and it was oddly ironic that the only conversations not one-sided were when he spoke to Fugaku (Fugaku, Fugaku, hardly deemed worthy of the title, 'father', 'cept Sasuke never fails to address him like that anyway) and the only conversations he was the individual speaking, was when he gave orders to his ANBU squad. Shisui never seemed to mind (while Sasuke had taken to pouting at him instead of speaking, and he almost, almost missed the brother's voice-like an angel of death-) and instead spoke to him about his day or his missions or his home, politely asking questions that could be supplied with one-word answers (or less) to Itachi, mostly (because he felt like he needed to check if Itachi was even _breathing) _so he didn't feel like he spoke to a brick wall. (But in comparitive terms, that's not too far off, is it?)

Sasuke still had the delicate, grass crown, (a Summer child) and hardly acted like a king. He was studying his hands with stubborn determination, as if his glare could change their shape and make them (likeable) into fingers that held kunai and threw shuriken. Uchiha fingers. He'd never have them.

Xxx

---

_-And the moon is painted with every color of your furiosity, hanging dull and uninterested as it does so. Sticky sweet blood from blue veins, making me wonder how it got there; in my childlike curiousity I never questioned the shades of crimson our clan beared, and yet now I find myself doing so without once inquisiting why.-_

_ ---_

**Author's Note: **The last sentence is implying Sasuke will never truly be an Uchiha, if you didn't get it. The italics was a piece from Itachi's journal, that I made. So no taking it. I was going to make this chapter longer with a seperate piece for both Mikoto and Fugaku, sort of like an introduction of the main clan members, at least from Itachi's point of view, but it seemed like a good place to end it and any other parts I tried making never turned out right.

'Jim Crow' is a reference to some form of segregation, used before African Americans gained rights in the United States. Of course, that's not what I'm implying it is as this chapter name, I'm sort of using it to say how Itachi is so seperate from everyone in his clan. Had I carried on with the Fugaku and Mikoto parts, it probably would have made it more clear to you, but I didn't, so whatever. Enjoy, and review, please. Most grammer mistakes are very much intentiontal, so don't bug me about it. I know 'perfecter' isn't a word, but it IS meant to be that way in that particular sentence of MY story.

_**REVIEW PLEASE!!!**_


	2. Clench

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor 'Oxford University Press', nor their computer dictionary connected to Microsoft Word's WordPerfect.

**1** This sentence is a direct usage of the WordPerfect dictionary by Oxford University Press definition of the word 'burn', I WILL be using more of the definition later in the story. The word 'Burn' has many different variations of it's definitions

**2 **This sentence is a direct usage of the WordPerfect dictionary by Oxford University Press definition of the word 'important'.

**3 **This sentence is a direct usage of the WordPerfect dictionary by Oxford University Press definition of the word 'willow'. It is in reference to the sentence made previously in the section above it, speaking about the Uchiha clan being similar to a Willow tree, Konoha being the leaves since Konoha is the Hidden Village of the Leaf.

The human race, if not acceptable for its supreme intelligence over the rest of the Earth's population, is signified as beings which are ultimately drawn to usages of items underneath them. Whilst it is not similar to the usages of their same species, it is dismal for its lack of self dependency. That is why, even past our first primal developments to our brain waves, we are still mildly connected to the restriction of our fists.

kkkkkkk

Itachi had learned three years after he was accepted into chuunin class, that it was not simply the person whose blood made designs across the flooring, but the methods used of bringing the blood to the surface. There were some men for whom Itachi had already chosen a weapon for, and then there were people, people like Shisui, who he didn't think he'd ever want to decide for. Two years later-he leaves bruises instead.

The kunai in his hand is unnaturally heavy, almost uncomfortably so, with the Uchiha crest painted over the wood of its handle. He thought it almost amusing how if the blade was ever burned, the metal would hardly be affected and the red-white fan melted into ashes. But he supposed that that was the whole point of the Uchihas. To burn.

One day the clan would burn down to the ground and there were a strict few people who weren't enough a part of them to disintegrate. Would it make them angry, he wondered? But what he questioned more was if he'd be another of those who'd catch on fire. Or maybe he'd light the matches.

_Past and past part; **burned** or chiefly Brit. **Burnt**; of a fire; flame or glow while consuming a fuel. **1** _Itachi is interrupted by the abrupt yell of Mikoto for dinner, and he sets down the kunai deciding he wouldn't honor Fugaku with his katana and instead mock him with the knife. (And the day you do it, Mikoto is the one with the slash of a katana across her neck even with her faulty aim, and you ask yourself why she still makes the better shinobi.)

kkkkkkk

They have met on the hilltop again, though this time it was unintentional. Itachi thinks that his subconscious was more active than its opponent, and that it's been leading him towards places where it knows someone else will be-just to give it the thought that he can't hurt himself as much when other people are there. He disagrees, for the only wound that he'd ever had to have sewn was the cut just above his eyebrow-Mikoto had been reminiscing her life as a shinobi, yet the false curl of her fingers around the blade of the kunai in her hand spoke otherwise, and the almost limp way of her jerk as she released into the stone wall with her eyes centered around the red and white fan for Uchiha fire. Flames only in her eyes for the sake of her resentment of her husband, her heritage, and the ways she was outsmarted even by her children. The only scars he acknowledges are the tiny, swollen line above the black hairs of his brow and the ones that don't show as easily on his skin.

He takes three steps towards Shisui, noting the undertones of every number he counts that could almost go unnoticed underneath his breath. His cousin, he realizes, can be almost as unqualified as a shinobi as Sasuke, despite the talent in his chakra paths. Flames different from his mother's and similar to most Uchiha's despite the rest of their differences in between. Then again, undertones never did count. Itachi blocks the faint whispers of his breath as his feet carry him further. (One, two, three,)

It's the uncanny need to be noticed, to be signified as a man despite his boyishness and symbolized as both an Uchiha and shinobi, as rare as it was to mix. (The Uchiha remained underneath the Hyuga simply for this reason, rising above only in the current generation for the odd results-at least seven of the members had qualified into chuunin class-almost all had qualified into the original hopes for their clan besides the development of the sharingan) Itachi thought that anyone's hopes inside the Uchiha clan of being noticed were single-handedly in his hands, eerily identical to theirs, (and Itachi is sure they're all jealous of their children before they adopt long fingers too slender to have a grip that wasn't perfect) and perhaps Sasuke's, for Itachi's sharingan was so developed he could catch the slightest change in their mood by the color of their chakra, and Sasuke because of his lack of their bloodline limit as well as their destiny of being blind along with it.

Shisui did not notice Itachi's presence until his hand is resting on his shoulder, and it takes him five seconds before he reacts. Itachi thinks that if he were Fugaku, he might raise an eyebrow and set his lips in a thin line for disappointment. But he is not his father, and he has to remind himself that Shisui is not his brother. Chances are Shisui recognized his presence as no threat long before Itachi considered him not realizing it in the first place. Then again, Shisui liked surprising people. It was nearly a disappointment to the most of them.

Shisui takes the first few seconds to jump before his shoulders curl into a twitch. It has an odd similarity to Mikoto as she releases her kunai into the Uchiha fence, but still not quite as mocking. Shisui would never put anyone other than himself in a jest, and Itachi almost states this aloud to calm the distaste in his cousin's eyes.

"So you couldn't sense me all along." Itachi's voice is a mere wisp of its full volume, and it carries no more density than the air. It floats on, and for Shisui's sake, Itachi ignores it as much. Shisui quickly pulls the corners of his lips into a smile, much similar to the twists of the ends of candy wrappers, but it is soured and old, and Itachi thinks there must be a henge on his friend's face for to cover the swirls of cobwebs collected there.

"Itachi." His name has always been a sentence with Shisui, so Itachi will not have to answer. Tonight however, he gives a curt nod of his head and his cousin's smile curves to the point that it almost looks real.

Shisui looks unnaturally small as he sits with his knees curled under his chin, and Itachi does not like looking at him that way. He has to remind himself that his cousin is not his brother, even in places like this with the moon easily posing as the sun the way it outlines their features in streams of its shadowed light. Shisui almost looks elegant, almost looks like Itachi or Mikoto or the other Uchihas from the significant branches of the family. Sometimes the clans are nothing more than a willow tree, and Konoha no more than a leaf.

"The moon looks different tonight," Shisui comments with the addition of a brash jab in its direction, unsuitable to the delicacy of his hands.

"It is late." Itachi admits, shifting his ankles underneath his knees where they're neatly folded in a cross. He prays to each and every god, to stop making moonlight into the reflections of faces he doesn't want to see. They wrinkle their features until they're imprinted on the stars, each glittering blink pounding into his forehead like a nauseating rhythm of head-ache induced slams. (Doors closing, each with the same sound in your face, like Fugaku's disappointment but doubled into Sasuke's)

"Sometimes, it looks like the moon is blending into the sun at these hours, right? I don't like it. It makes me feel like I'm missing something." Shisui is twisting his fingers together in endless symbols, and it almost looks like he's trying to make knots with his limbs that amount to more than those collecting at the muscles in his stomach. Or perhaps, Itachi thinks, his cousin is trying to figure out how to pray as much as he was. It's hard, and for the life of him he hasn't figured it out yet-for surely if he did it right he'd feel at least a little bit different than he does now.

Itachi cocks his head to the side and though Shisui is facing the bottom curves of the moon, he catches the movement out of the corner of his vision, lips open and quivering insistently whether through cold or nerves, (or hopelessness) the ends weathered down as much as the look in his eyes. Shisui has no smile for Itachi in the moonlight. It's too dark, hopefully enough so that people don't see the lack of his grin. Only Obito's teeth are known for glittering in darkness, and so most people will not, but Itachi does, and knows full well that Shisui's do as well.

"Because, Itachi." They didn't bother with 'san' from the beginning and don't care enough about each other to start, but they know each other enough that by now it might be taken as an insult, "Things hide better at night."

Itachi didn't know about that. If he were a different man of the Uchiha, he'd just as likely activate his sharingan and see Shisui better than he'd ever seen him in the day. Shisui's emotions, like most members of their clan, ran in the colors of his chakra rather than the width of his eyes. It was suitable, yes, and to everyone else they were no more than a tool and praised even more than the metal.

"You aren't missing anything important." Itachi offered, almost questionably, daring Shisui to reply.

"Important?" Shisui turned in a rough jerk (This time just as mocking as Mikoto) to face Itachi. "What is important to you?"

"_Of great significance or value; Having high rank or social status_." **2 **Recited as much as his prayers. (What makes the moonlight shimmer?)

Shisui narrows his eyes more than Itachi ever could without them looking like slits. "That's not what I mean. What is important to you?"

Itachi doesn't reply, for if he did Shisui might look at him a little differently, a little suspiciously, and Itachi likes the look Shisui gives him currently just fine. Shisui slaps his palm against his cheek before it hits the ground almost as hard, as if he punishes himself and the earth for making him. Or maybe just for making Itachi, but everyone knew Uchihas just don't pray right and Mikoto couldn't exactly keep him in. He wasn't really the son she liked to hold close.

Shisui's palm is still resting on the dirt before he thrusts his legs out from underneath his chin. He isn't feeling vulnerable anymore, and Itachi wonders whether it was because of the anger or the approaching sunrise. "Are you going to watch the sunrise?" He doesn't add the last two words he wanted to, "with me?", but Shisui doesn't seem to find it necessary. Instead, his cousin seems shocked that Itachi has asked him a slightly pointless question without them already inside a conversation.

Shisui pulls Itachi over to him by the shoulder and ruffles his hair with his knuckles, and Itachi almost feels like a little kid again.

kkkkkkk

**Willow-**_a tree or shrub which typically grows near water, has narrow leaves and pliant branches, and bears catkins. Origin Old English -- _**3** -- Mikoto's last thought as Itachi enters his room that night is that she still doesn't know where the water happens to be.

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-_ We are no better than the rest of them; bow down to the slow witted, slit the throats of the dully sympathetic.-_

kkkkkkk

_What makes the moonlight shimmer?_

**Author's Note: **I was hoping for something longer, but this is probably enough to hold you off while I write the next chapter, right? DAMNIT! I've been rhyming like crazy without meaning to for the past two weeks…Please, oh please, oh please review for me. It really does inspire me for later chapters. ANYONE can review, don't be shy. You can message me, as well if you want. Oh! And Happy Thanksgiving! This chapter is my gift to all ya'll! Have a nice holiday, mmkay? Alright!


	3. Wax

Human minds are promising for their lack of reprimand towards themselves. Whilst even the men of the least intelligence are likely to catch other's mistakes, especially when the person at fault is close to them emotionally or shares some sort of attachment to an item or feeling of the other, said man will never once catch a mistake they themselves have made. It is likely that one will search a mate for lack of self-applied punishments rather than need of comfort or heart-warmth.

Xxx-xxX

To burn, literally in flame or unconsciously lit to fire within mind or soul, is normally extracted through words or movements. The problem with men who have permanently been on fire, is that no one is able to tell when they have fallen to ashes.

XxX

Itachi is writing in the newest mission report by the wavering candlelight, cautiously set on a small platform to prevent wax from dripping onto the table. It has happened to Fugaku before, (monkey see monkey do) and Itachi learns more from others mistakes than from his own (or perhaps from the spews of curses that come from Fugaku's thin-set mouth, disappointment that he can only push towards himself or Mikoto as she sighs and scrubs at the spot until her fingers are raw and the wax was far past swept into her palm pressed at the side of the desk top, still rubbing deeper into the stains her family leaves so she knows her place in their household).

He realizes that he has traced the same word in ink at least twice and it has soaked through the paper (better for Mikoto, so she can spot it later on and leave it in a muted sort of relief that her son isn't a god, though that could only make him a devil) but sets down the pen and turns towards the quietly loud footsteps in the doorway. There is no one in the clan but Sasuke who does not know where they stand, and that makes his little brother's stride the only one that makes a sound.

Sasuke glances at him shyly (so much so that Itachi can see his own fingers wrapped around his neck without him daring to scream) and slowly asks the same question he does everyday, if only so he can expect tomorrow. "Will you train with me, brother?"

Itachi gestures towards the paper on the desk, safely set away from the excess candle wax of a flickering red flame and the hopeful eyes of Sasuke that would burn through it as much. "Nii-san…You're dripping ink onto your paper."

Nothing Itachi ever does is an accident (except how his eyes linger on people's backs when he is not completely aware of it, thinking that perhaps someday the world of a genius becomes somehow less literal and more to his liking) and he is glad that he knows too many people who don't understand that. It was simply a different excuse to start over on the report, and take longer in staying away from his younger brother. Sasuke wasn't like him.

"I suppose I'll have to start over again, Sasuke. Perhaps tomorrow." He thinks that maybe the glint in Sasuke's eye means he understands.

Xxx-xxX

There are three components to speaking. Breathing in, breathing out, and voicing one's opinions. Itachi finds that most people forget to breath. Shisui's lips are quickly moving to words layered in the thrum at his throat through a bad cough he'd gotten from a cold the past week, and it's not until he's startled by a choking pull at his lungs that he sucks in deep gulps of air. Itachi studies the way Shisui's hands grope his mouth as he coughs, before blinking heavily and staring back.

He cracks a sly smile, "You watch people too much. It's like you're looking for mistakes you can't find with blinking." It's silent for a moment, for their surroundings are only ever filled with Shisui's voice or the affirmative grunt from Itachi before he speaks again. "…Do you find them?"

Itachi blinks slowly (trying to miss all the faults) before tilting his head away in a slight nod. Shisui gets up from his position by the tree trunk at the training grounds and doesn't ask anymore questions.

Itachi finds it odd that some people avoid learning what is wrong about them selves. Sasuke always listens (when his voice is too loud or his breaths are too quick or he's making Itachi stare at him too long) - and Itachi realizes that he compares too many things to Sasuke.

Too many people do.

Xxx-xxX

He goes home to find Mikoto scrubbing the spot of ink he left on the desk top before she stands and gestures with her dish towel towards him. "Tell me, the next time your ink soaks through, Itachi? It's a fairly new table and your father doesn't want to have to buy a new one."

She lightly brushes past him to go to the kitchen and put away the rag, and his chest aches too bad for him to stand any longer, so he moves into his room and sits at his desk to finish the mission report.

He thinks of the untouched smear of orange crayon wax on the table leg from Sasuke, and how it was left long enough for him to know that Mikoto couldn't have simply just missed it.

(_toomanypeopledo_)

Xxx-xxx

The next day Sasuke asks him the same question he does everyday, if only for the sense of tradition (maybe it's Sasuke's way of telling Itachi he loves him, because he is smart enough to know his older brother wouldn't accept it that blatantly).

Itachi pokes two fingers into Sasuke's forehead, and the sensation leaves something burning. True scars go deeper than the skin (worlds are becoming less literal to soothe aches caused by untouched lines of crayon wax) and the newest addition is burrowed down in his chest.

He cannot say it is his heart, not the dull ache that Mikoto gives him as her smile is no more than hesitant, but something frightens him that it's getting too close.

He continues prodding Sasuke's forehead, convincing him self it's merely for the sake of tradition that they so humbly carry out, and not the sick sort of longing deeper than Mikoto's avoiding glance that has only ever reached his chin that he wants something in him to break.

He knows he has met too many people who could see when he fell to ash to let him go, but it feels pleasantly hurtful to understand how much he wants to see their eyes meet something other than the bottom of his chin.

_-Men in hats; masks, porcelain- to name them by an individual series of syllables, a word, a name- despite being created of many titles…You cannot ask them to be truthful in a lie, cannot ask a shinobi his name, for he will lie to his fullest…as he was taught to do. You will ask him who he is, what is his given title, and he will respond with 'murderer'.-_

AN: Sorry I didn't put the clip of 'Itachi's Journal' in before, but it slipped my mind. So, here you go! The slightly edited version of chapter three. Enjoy.

_**REVIEW PLEASE!!!**_

(No, seriously. I like them. :D)


	4. Brotherly Affection

Man is significant strictly for his ability of becoming an individual, and it is those who he or she considers of higher intelligence that signify something greater than man itself. Man-Woman-and the easily identified Kings.

Xxx-xxX

From where he's lying, he feels like Sasuke.

It might be a good thing that he's experiencing his brother first hand and not the simple observations he makes from the small touches or pokes, nor the fantasies in the dreams that have seemed to increase in quantity. He doesn't sleep often, he realizes, not until he's at the point of exhaustion and even then a restless sleep does not do anything to change his weariness; now he moves in slow, delicate strokes like the fingers that trail down his sides, and he didn't think Shisui could ever be this much like him.

Itachi feels small and uncertain towards the rough, beautiful hands with their blunt, unoriginal shapes and outlines that are so much like his own. He asked Sasuke (a thing his brother probably does not remember because Itachi always makes sure his best conversations are at night) if their hands were the same, but Itachi was almost sure he was asleep and managed to convince himself the simple 'No. Yours are nicer, Nii-san.' was only because Sasuke had yet to fall asleep until the few strokes past midnight when Itachi filled him with promises of the words he didn't say at any other time. Itachi was starting to notice that Sasuke stayed up until those hours- that Sasuke would wait until he got home from his missions on the times he had to go to them and that Sasuke always seemed to be the destination he was walking towards.

Itachi doesn't think Shisui has very nice hands- they're fumbling in broken traces of the curves of his hips, and they're more mechanical than anything else. Robotic, almost, and Sasuke's hands are better. Maybe it's because Sasuke is a child (even if Itachi was an adult two years before Sasuke's last birthday, even if Fugaku gave scornful glances at his infancy, even if Mikoto was running out of excuses for her son and they all ran circles around him like he was a king, like the crown was dishonor to his bloodline and it was right on top his head) and is filled only with the unbroken self-confidence of men below the age of twelve (Itachi remembers he is fourteen, and though the first years are stored in Mikoto's apron all the rest of them are in Sasuke's palm like gumdrops; if not lacking in both color and sweetness, for they are bitter and old and grayed with the premature silver hairs of them both). Sasuke does not second guess grabbing a hand to hold, only ever doubting himself in the aim of his throw and as of that Itachi has expected only to be faulty so he will have to be shown again in the company of his father or Itachi or factors of average day life that he is severely lacking to the point of obnoxiously tedious failures.

Clever mistakes, sins of wit they are, the Uchiha clan, and his cousin rises above him like the owner of it all. Itachi thinks he hates him.

He feels young, younger than he's felt since he was four, staring at the ceiling tiles and almost smiling at the possibility of being caught. That's what's in it for Shisui, the danger or the effeminacy of Itachi, he does not know; but what's in it for him is all the thoughts disappearing with every strike, every thrust, every moan, every count of a speckle on the tile.

He stares at them the whole time.

Xxx-xxX

-(**be burning with**) be entirely possessed by (a desire or emotion)- (**1**) Mikoto knows exactly what Itachi has done by the uncharacteristic disheveled look of him, but he was only ever amounting up to less than the sins she committed (birth of Itachi, birth of gods- men never wanted to have to bow down to someone and Itachi slowly pressures them with his hand and his eyes and the aim of his throw that is so, so much better than his brother's, as any wind current will weather the mountains and erode them into fine ash and dust that will settle beneath it) and so she gives him a sad smile and continues walking towards the kitchen.

Itachi thinks Mikoto is the only one who ever is able to see him in the places no one else would- as a mother, the factors are highly likely just as Sasuke will only come to her with his tears and Fugaku will understand that his wife loves their children more than he, but for Itachi it is both a curse and a blessing. But if Mikoto still has the energy to piece together false smiles, Itachi won't worry himself for now.

Itachi goes into his room, and Sasuke is waiting for him on the bed.

Xxx-xxX

Like a normal brother would, Itachi frowns at Sasuke with his eyes betraying the direction of his lips, and Sasuke plays the part he's morphed himself into and smiles whole-heartedly. It looks strangely like his mouth is breaking his face, how it spreads over the skin, and he thinks it's much safer to frown (that's why Fugaku is in an unbreakable one and Itachi is finally taking after his father).

"Nii-san, 'Kaa-san said you didn't have any missions today."

Itachi lowers himself into his chair, slow and delicate strokes, like a painting he will one day show to Sasuke. Itachi wants him to see all of his art, every fine line and every color, and it is the second time that night he feels the childish entrapment he pushed aside so long ago. Innocence- waving runny, colorful paper in a mother's face held in sticky thumbs (he wondered when Sasuke became his mother, when his little brother took such a spot of importance in his chest, and it is aching and pumping at the sight of him with the most earnest heartbeat he has ever held). "Okaa-san may have access to some of the regular files, but only ANBU can view the higher-class." Itachi wouldn't have ever before viewed Shisui as high class. He's learning something new today, like a child beyond the chalk board, and the eraser is no longer hovering in view.

Sasuke nods agreeably, "Nii-san, can I sleep with you tonight?"

"No, Sasuke. I'm sorry. Maybe another time." Sasuke catches the similarity in between the words, but Itachi is getting too tired to come up with something clever. He is exhausted over the exhaustion he has felt for days, moon over moon and now it is almost full in the sky, highlighting all that is Sasuke and carefully shadowing Itachi- playing all of their rules and roles in order, a nature that bends to their will and Itachi wonders when they have become gods.

"But this isn't training or practicing shuriken, Nii-san, because I finished throwing those yesterday and 'Tou-san (**2**) says I can start with three tomorrow. Can I stay?"

Itachi shakes his head and leans forwards to poke Sasuke's forehead, before stopping halfway and all but collapsing against the back of his desk chair. Sasuke paws at his pant leg worriedly, the type of innocent Itachi feels today as he is unconcerned that his brother might not be able to handle himself if that thin layer of cloth was not there over Sasuke's fingers. Itachi asks himself when he must be shielded from Sasuke. How far has it gotten that Itachi is thanking thread and needle?

"Your Nii-san hasn't been able to sleep well, Sasuke."

"So then I can help! Nii-san, if I'm there it'll-," His voice is frightened and panicky, as if it was life or death over sleeping in Itachi's bed for a night. One more night, and the next Sasuke would ask him again but it cannot be eternal. Sasuke will grow out of loving his brother just as Itachi grew out of loving his parents, and if something cannot last longer than the night has been to him it is not worth it in the end. Itachi is finished with things that don't last; Shisui's orgasm and Sasuke's concern, because it is _not enough. _

Itachi cuts him off. "No, Sasuke. Go back to your room. Okaa-san and Otou-san wouldn't like it if you were sleeping here, and you need to learn to be on your own. Go." He politely avoids telling his brother that Sasuke is the exact reason he cannot get to sleep.

How his brother haunts his dreams, and Itachi can only wonder whether he haunts Sasuke's. But Sasuke has not lost sleep, because he has his innocence, and enough to tell him it's just brotherly affection.

Itachi has felt innocent all night, childish and longing and the hand that snakes to his waistband tells him that too. Just brotherly affection, the fingers pulling his pants to his thighs, and soon he is lost.

Chalky scribbles, over the sheets.

-_Circles are the main feature of our human lives, because that is what we run in.-_

**_AN: _**Oh my holy mother of Christ god, I updated willingly! This chapter was so fun to write, because I totally wanted seme!Shisui and uke!Itachi, and hardly anyone really writes that! I've been planning it since, what, the beginning of the second chapter or something?, and I finally get to write it! I hope it wasn't _too_ sudden to ya'll, but it has been building since the first chapter if you didn't notice. A lot of people use Itachi going to Shisui to forget Sasuke, and I built off that luverly plot. DAYYUM, I'm SO PROUD OF MYSELF! –babbles gibberish- I deserve a frickin' hug. Or better yet, **REVIEWS**.

I don't own Microsoft WordPerfect12's Oxford University Press dictionary, therefore I don't own their definition of the word 'burn'. Told ya' that'd be worming it's way back in. There's just so many different meanings to the word.

Sasuke, in the anime, kind of has a sort of casual way of speech, or at least how he uses the words 'mother' and 'father', because he never says 'Okaa-sama' or 'Otou-sama', instead using 'Kaa-san and 'Tou-san. So I put that in there, and though I never paid attention to what Itachi called his parents I simply figured he'd reverse that and go for a slightly more formal, less attached or loving way of saying mom and dad. So I put him calling them 'Okaa-san' and 'Otou-san'. Not as polite as he could get, but still polite, and so it doesn't fade into the 'worshipping' category, just formal enough to be detached.

_**REVIEW PLEASE!!!**_

(And Gaara will stop…masturbating everywhere in the Sabaku household. Honestly, it's getting to be a real problem and you want Temari and Kankuro to be happy, don't you? Think of the Suna maids! Think of them when you look at that review button!)


	5. Mirror, Mirror

It is of a failure when fifty years after royalty is deceased and but a well-placed memory that man has completely hence forth erased said remembrance of the ones higher in rank. The worst, most shameful part on record is the fact that their forgetting of the other man's brilliance is no more remembered than the man itself.

Xxx-xxX

Itachi remembers all the cracked mirrors in the house, perhaps because he holds onto memories like a lifeline. Seven years of bad luck, for each broken one, and he has recited the moments in his mind again and again until they are over.

Sasuke breaks most of them, Itachi thinks, but it has always been easier to blame himself than his brother even if he hasn't quite remembered why. It must be a memory, as he remembers the mirrors and the mistakes, for if he is a genius than he probably figured it out some time ago. Faults are folded into small pieces, easier to collect than the glass shards, kind to him and easy to forget and they've never left scars on his hands.

But pieces collect, like the dust over the unused books on his shelves- except just as Itachi expects Sasuke to one day read the carefully aligned scrolls in his room he expects Sasuke to one day be mature enough to take every mistake he's made in Itachi and place it back in himself.

But seven years of bad luck is multiplied to a crack in them, deeper than what it takes to break a mirror, and they are all left shattered. All the blame and all the split ends worm their way out, slower, slowly, and one by one they are aligned in careful rows of military positions within Sasuke that are more well-placed then his bookshelves, and the sins written in red ink wind into a spool of thread they have to sew themselves back together with when they are ready.

When they've paid their dues and the clan graves have been danced upon, and their foot prints in the raised dirt are deeper than what it's taken to become broken and smooth over the pride in the Uchiha bloodline.

Xxx-xxX

Itachi almost finds humor in the fact that despite being praised as one of the better shinobi of his time, he seems to discover more potential in the people around him than he has ever found in himself. Mikoto wastes her days away as a widow with a husband, never fully accepting the fact even after over fifteen years of marriage that she is no longer single (Itachi finds her waiting for him to come back from missions on occasion, although the look in her eye suggests she is not longing for her son). Fugaku is even more blind than Itachi, lacking a developed sharingan or eyesight that does not only see prodigious acts (perhaps, Itachi thinks, that is the reason why Fugaku has dawdled more and more on Sasuke and seemingly less on him).

Sasuke has no more time than the chance to redeem himself for something of the past before he is committing himself to another mistake that costs more than the one before. Itachi thinks there is a fault in their system, there always has been, because there is the man who is blind and he has so many more eyes on him. Itachi's world is darkening, the glow of Uchihas fading from what once was, the only thing that kept his vision from bleeding and the blood is on his hands now.

Xxx-xxX

Shisui is found dead the next morning.

Xxx-xxX

_-Blood runs cold in those who aren't human; humanity inside the population of us all a sore and bitter corpse that is decaying as a shed skin of the serpent and the spiders at his feet.-_

**_AN: _**I wanted to make this sort of a 'filler' chapter, a sort of prologue to the next chapter, which is a more in depth description of what happened. I hope I gave enough hints to tell you what happened. I don't know where the diary entry came from, but since I normally work on impulse anyway it doesn't really matter, does it? If you couldn't tell, **Itachi Met Orochimaru**, and it implies that that has something to do with Shisui's death. This is almost a 'fill in the blanks yourself' story, and though the Orochimaru plot is overused I'm trying to take a new twist on it. I'm actually using a lot more clichés than needed/wanted/I expected/, but I almost like it that way because if I pulled something out of my ass that wasn't as…speculated as the theories that've already been invented on Itachi, I doubt anything would make sense. My theories often do have logic to them, but it's a very…difficult logic and it's too difficult to something (in this instance, Itachi's past) that I thought would actually be more simple. I don't want 'too simple' or overused, but I don't want to come up with something crack or unbelievable. Therefore, expect great things to come, friends. Hopefully I'll get the next chapter out soon, to clear some things up a bit more, **AND JUST TO TELL YOU, YES, I'VE DECIDED I DO WANT THE PLOTLINE TO GO RATHER FAST, AS THIS WILL PROBABLY BE A SHORTER STORY THAN YOU EXPECTED WITH A PURPOSEFULLY ABRUPT ENDING THAT WILL COME SOON**.

Now that that's out of my system, I want to totally spam you out with the fanart the LUVERLY, and most WONDERFUL CatGurl2004 drew me. I've been drooling over this thing like, all night since I got it, and I've been looking forward to linking it here! I love it so much! –hugs paper-

http ://s13. photobucket. com/albums/a284/LunaGlossamer/?actionview¤tUchiha.; jpg (Remove Spaces)

_**REVIEW PLEASE!!!**_

(And shit will go down :D.)


	6. Unfocused

_Chapter dedicated to **CatGurl2004**. My muse. –pets her- XD_

_**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto. Only Masashi Kishimoto-sensei does. So chillax._

Mistakes are a fickle thing to those who commit them. Similar to sins, but remotely lacking any religious consequences, man is known only for punishing himself in the face of his faults. Only those highly ignorant and superior to the rest of mankind would patronize those who have been false.

Xxx-xxX

With a sudden maturity, perhaps the same very type that let Itachi's hands push Shisui into the lake he was known and named after for some sort of source of irony, Sasuke's fingers are longer than they used to be. Cuts dawdle less than Fugaku on his hands, and as the tide of their cousin washes out from beneath them Sasuke is planting himself deep into the soil of their clan with the simple accuracy of the throw of shuriken.

Itachi has little time to uproot him (but he will, because he no longer loves his mother and watching her bleed away into a stain on the floor he has walked his entire life with the apron strings that once held him so tightly as a child secured around her neck and waist is much less a burden to him than Sasuke becoming the people he has already watched fade to save him in the first place).

Xxx-xxX

It is with a sort of dry, senseless humor of a man who has lost something to grasp unfamiliar territory in his hands that he catches the simple fact of the color of a shinobi's forehead protector judging Shisui's worth.

The men and women gathered there are not sorted into family, friends, and foes as any normal man would have it be, but simply those who knew Shisui and those who did not care to look beyond his face. Haughty, selfish beings, those who do not bother to use the tools resting in their palms, those who do not bother to catch the flicker of a man behind a boyish face by simply relying on the sharingan that was given to them. Itachi decides that he will one day see everything with a tool so he will not mistake that which he is seeing as such.

Once the blood is on his hands, it will stain his eyes.

But right now, he is still cleaning that which is Shisui from underneath his fingernails (and as though the length of Sasuke's hands affects his senses, Sasuke seems to recognize whom it belongs to, one who is not his brother no matter how much effort he put into himself).

And a world that was mostly red had darkened. No sharingan looks upon him now, for the legend has ceased, and in its place is his younger brother and that which is now black- what has changed is now unchangeable in its newest forms, and the path to tread is told at its best when one will look upon the color of Sasuke's eyes as he will have it.

The funeral for Shisui is as dreary and false lived as a dream-world, cast away in the shadows creeping along their walls and eventually up their spines in a shiver. But everything can fade when that tremor has ended, as soon Shisui's will, and all the dreams become the sins and are a memory once more.

Dreams become the truths at the end of a world that is not their own, and Sasuke's is creeping towards the edge of that which is Itachi.

Dreams have all started here.

Xxx-xxX

Rumors are similar to a nightmare, but coming from false and boasting mouths such prevents Itachi from holding something tight to his chest and forgetting.

Sasuke says gossip is the rain, washing away the news of yesterday and at the funeral for Shisui there is a live storm that drenches the earth and their cousin is gone. He is lowered into the ground more easily than the wails coming from his mother's mouth that is better suited to petty whispering, for truth does not come easily from the mask that is her powder and hairspray which run out onto the gravel to chase after her son.

Itachi cannot say she will not be jealous of her make up.

Mikoto has a bundle of white roses she had hesitantly dug up from her garden that morning clasped between her hands that have attached themselves into the corner of her breasts. She is the mother, Itachi thinks, and she will not be soothed from them.

Fugaku is simply standing respectfully in the same stance he always is in, hands clenched into fists at his sides and back straighter than anyone else's. Sasuke once told Itachi that he liked his father because of that, as if an even spine means anything. After all, Itachi's father has never once had to strangle his best friend in front of memories.

It seems odd, now, that Itachi was remembering everything while he murdered him, from the grass crown Shisui placed on Sasuke's head to the fake smiles he painted over his features- and somehow Itachi only realizes at his funeral despite all his genius that Shisui might've been more like him than he knew. But he lets the rain wash the thought away, because now is the time that Shisui is placed elsewhere. Whether he is forced into the next life through tears or the thunder storm raging overhead that cracks as a whip of punishment over Itachi's back, arching down until he is placing his chin against Sasuke's head and sobbing, and sounds suspiciously like Shisui as he yells and rages further than a storm naturally should.

They should all get out of the rain, now, but things don't matter as much as Mikoto will complain as their shirts and dresses will have to be dry cleaned the next day when someone has died.

Itachi does not cry, but he tries restlessly as everyone else freely screams louder than one would as they die, because it feels unnatural not to.

Shisui once asked him what mistakes he saw when he stared at a person, but the faults are lost in the dark of Sasuke's hair- or perhaps all the ceiling lights broke and shattering, for the momentary relief comes as he promises himself it's a dream.

Xxx-xxX

Shisui had a meaning to his death, perhaps as much as the one of his life, for Itachi had chosen to let him sink into the river they so often lived by more than just for irony. Or perhaps that was all they ever were, because if Itachi remembered right Shisui had once told him that irony was one of his favorite things. Itachi doesn't know what he likes anymore, just as he won't admit that ever since Shisui was gone the list has become frighteningly blank.

And Sasuke is enviously unaffected.

Itachi wishes he would become a child again, an infant where the most important thing was the warmth of Mikoto, but all that was signed and sealed away with the death of Shisui.

With the mangekyou in his possession, Itachi has never felt more blind.

Fugaku is not a stupid man, and recognizes Itachi's actions for what they are. But through the next weeks, he does not say a word to anyone about his son's intentions.

Questions come up- buried as he was Shisui has dug back more faults than answers, and Itachi can't blink past the mistakes. Plans, whether vague or complex to the point of hopelessness, have always made it impossible to ignore what has gone wrong in the face of ruining what one has plotted to happen.

Then again, Itachi killed less Uchihas than he had planned three weeks from the night of Shisui's burial, and he does not assume that it was because of pure coincidence. For despite being the main focus of everything, Sasuke was his biggest mistake, and he has ignored him most of all.

Itachi is only sorry for not thinking he would regret Shisui's death as much as he did.

Sasuke manages to capture him in his eyes bluntly lacking the sharingan whenever Itachi begins to doubt himself- and he thinks that interpreted carefully, Sasuke could manage to theorize that the clan massacre was his older brother's way of telling him he loved him. After all, Sasuke wouldn't accept it that blatantly.

And Sasuke sees better than Itachi, because for the next four days he avoids him as if it was Itachi's fault for killing Shisui.

But in the end, everything was indebted to him. Sasuke broke the mirror, and seven years of bad luck is an invitation to a lifetime of loving his older brother best.

_-Only those of bad fortune –breaking mirrors, passing a black cat- have such lack of luck to lower themselves from the level of what once was, godliness and pure prodigious skill, to something of lesser value. Mortal places in rank. They say I am a Kage. But what was I once? We are defined by what lowers or raises us, what brings us to value. That which I work for has left me empty handed, and blind. Irony- things come back from the grave.-_

**_AN: _**-weirded out- O-o This chapter was so…different? from the rest of the story? I almost want to say it doesn't fit, because it does, but this fanfiction is really making me think of it as a designer clothes collection, where it doesn't exactly add up precisely, but it IS a collection of clothing. Like, it all has a certain theme to it, or something. This has ended up being more a 'collection' of one-shots than it has been a multi-chaptered fic, but I sort of like it better that way.

Fanart:http//s13. photobucket. com/albums/a284/LunaGlossamer/?actionview¤tuchihaoyako05.; jpg (Remove Spaces) This was from the LUVERLY CatGurl2004, who draws me bunches of fanart! –huggles her- So say thank you to her for this. So preeetty. OO –stares at picture-

_**REVIEW PLEASE!!!**_

(And things'll get MESSY, ye old readers. REAL messy. Like: Itachi killing his clan, ItachixSasuke action, Itachi joining Akatsuki, fun little bits of Akatsuki members, fun little bits of angsty emo shit, etc. etc. In the words of that highly annoying commercial: Be happy, be healthy:D…D: )


	7. Daybreak

The four seasons of life on earth are consisted of the tilt and spin of a gravity determined pull which cannot be changed. Men who try to change what is considered unchangeable are brimming with death and idiocy, and there are many of them. Those who differ from majorities are only small in numbers, and small, changeable things make no difference to the stupidity of mankind.

**Xxx-xxX**

He opens his eyes.

Kisame's shoulders stretch out over the horizon, and he is farther away from Itachi than either of them have realized before. The days Itachi knew Shisui are over, and there is only this unfamiliar, frighteningly comforting face left before him- but the old days are over- and they travel through sun set and sun awakening and the depths of night that wash over him in the sweaty humidity that reminds him of tiny, plump baby fingers grabbing the sleeves of his coat.

Sasuke has followed him all the way out here.

This man of swords and supremacy sits before him and is never afraid to look at him through his eyes. Itachi is vulnerable- he has never hidden anything behind himself, and it is only that no one has dared look at him that makes him seem invincible. This man of his crooked, halved smiles that are more truthful than their whole can see Itachi's age and fragility like the flower encrusted in the frost of winter.

Perhaps that frost is Kisame, and not the blood of assassination beneath their nails- Kisame has water and frigidity and ice without it near, and Itachi has never touched him for that. There have been moments where he has reached out a hand, but if he had ever reached him fully Itachi would've been frozen forever.

And Sasuke is waiting for him as the wind blows- those infant fingers tearing at his sleeves and the steady mess of a heart beating above them.

He opens his eyes.

Xxx-xxX

The fists rain down more upon him than the door of their entrance hall.

Itachi sits still on his bed staring through the walls and into the facts that he will not be moving- not when it has only been a handful of days and he has still not had enough time to grieve for the gain of a step forward in his plans.

Sasuke tells him there are men at the door, and he gets up from the tussled sheets of sleeping through any chances of moments he will think (he has more loyalty to Sasuke than to Shisui, but he still wishes for the unsure hands sliding down his sides- if he had told Sasuke it would be okay, then he would have believed him).

The letter he wrote for Shisui's death might as well have been in his handwriting as the Uchiha elders push it towards him (there's more guilt stored in his eyes with that evidence, because he has more loyalty to Sasuke-but if he had told Sasuke death wouldn't hurt than he'd believe him even if Shisui never listened to a word of it), although even if they are far from idiocy they are gullible towards their own family line.

The lines drawn between it all are thin and breakable, and the matters of blood were drawn and broken with Shisui as Itachi pressed their lips together. Only next are the heart strings, insufferable bonds that pull and tug farther than he would like (and still, that is not the reason you are breaking them), and that will be accomplished more easily than the fold and slicing of Shisui, until they were both broken down into uncollected pieces scattered in Sasuke.

Itachi knows that that, above all reasons, is the meaning behind the delicate, tentative glances replacing where once they were strong- the definition of why a clan still brimming and bubbling with power at it's very finest level would refuse to meet it's other members' eyes—Because everything, from the tipsy grace of blood spill to the discarded apron strings tied around Mikoto (those wonderful, welcome joys that keep her close to her son), has ended in Sasuke, to the point where there is nothing else left to go to.

Once those things have narrowed, Itachi cannot, for all his wit and genius, expand them once again.

There will be no clan- just as there will be no lines and no Shisui and no hesitant glances (in those sorrowful faces of melancholy and deadliness the strength will rise again, straight from the grave and Shisui's death was as important as his life in that he was the beginning of the end of something beautiful in it's ugliness), and perhaps, one day, no longer any Itachi.

He will not fail Sasuke on that, and those promises haven't grown old with their age- never as dry and brittle as their souls or their happiness or Shisui.

Xxx-xxX

There is something unfamiliar bubbling beneath his skin, something unchangeable and distanced from what he has seen before, and nothing (besides this, this cutting of the apron strings in treaties within yourself and the creases of the floors in your old, ancient house creeping and crawling like an infant in it's foundation with the dizzied twists of something unstable- your house which has been built on the curved space of Konoha land that never ceases to flip and bubble and flow like the blood that binds you and it to this new lifestyle of dawn and daybreak, and such supreme, sharp-eyed sly men who see right through you) will be the same after the damns built to protect himself from this power are broken.

He has time to imagine that those bridges of sticks and stones and frigidity (blood bonds, whose brother's were broken with your lips, and the chilling, frozen icicles surrounding the petals of red drool from the arms and legs of your clan, and broken with them are the lines they thought were there) were broken when he killed Shisui.

So many things ended, blood bonds and broken with blood- that red drool from the dogs of the Uchihas, and only them, only Shisui and Itachi and Sasuke, those boys and men and monsters who knew they were nothing, were not like the rest of them. Mikoto is obliged to be so and Fugaku is carefully submerged where it is easiest for him to get out if things are taken too far, and whoever rules them has yet to. Itachi thinks that it might be him, with jeweled crowns of blood and sex and promise- or Sasuke, with that carefully made grass circlet that recognizes their similarity to Summer (brittle and dry and their promises are fulfilled, if only so Itachi can get what he wants for that carefully strung cycle of honor and tradition all of them follow, or because none of them want their obligations to be the same as their souls; Men are only worth as much as their promises, and if those fade they will have to face the truth of what they are).

But ultimately, the only time they will recognize themselves is when the now nonexistent lines are crossed, and the only time it occurs is as they watch their own blood drain away to rest endlessly in the floorboards where they were nurtured.

Itachi opens his eyes and they are dripping and oozing with fairness and memoirs of their mistakes, like Shisui or Itachi or Sasuke.

_-A summer child-_

One of them is suiting to comparison, and perhaps it is only sympathy and regret that makes Itachi choose Shisui over his little brother every time.

That is why he does not bother to consider how much Sasuke will cry as he murders their parents.

Xxx-xxX

There is no difference in between killing- It's just that there are no memories, and there is blood instead of water. _-Dripping and oozing.-_

Xxx-xxX

He opens his eyes.

Xxx-xxX

-_And we wish, oh we wish, how we could wear the masks and diamond-cut patterns over all our wounds that bleed, as easily as the harlequin in pantomimes; jerky, dismal movements we watch with awe.-_

**Xxx-xxX**

**_AN: _**I guess it's a good feat. Longer than SOME chapters (-eyes chapter five-) at least- I know there was a ton of mentions to the first few chapters, so you may want to reread all the chapters so you can really understand this one. All of the 'he opens his eyes' shit was purposefully there to confuse you and make you ask yourself 'Was he just dreaming all of that up this chapter?'. The 'Itachi's Journal' piece was something I wrote a few months ago, and since I STARTED Burn, I've been wanting to add it in somewhere. It seems a bit dumb now, but a while ago when I wrote it it seemed pretty kickass.

_**REVIEW PLEASE!!!**_

(Seriously. It helps get me off my ass to write more-)


	8. Willow Tree

Something is waiting for him in sleep, now that everything has gone as he wished it to. Perhaps the unfinished pieces of the background plans in his mind were what had kept him up, not simply Sasuke.

He has come to the conclusion that there are things more complex than his little brother, and not everything can end in him.

Perhaps everything still does, everything about Itachi-, but the world is a separate entity from themselves and that has been what has kept the byakugan fading into the sharingan and prevented it from falling back again. They are not as pure as the Hyuugas- those monsters and devils sliding through the cracks of midnight during their best conversations, and hugs are more personal than family in the Uchihas.

Itachi does not know how to kiss-, he only knows roughness and blunt affection, like the blood running down his hands and out his eyes in the flawed perfections of his new vision (he wants to show it all to Sasuke, all the artwork he has created with the curve of his hips and the melted white of a color over his thighs- teach him what he can touch and what he can bleed- _their bed can be a chalkboard for the wicked little sinning boys, narrow hips that rocked themselves all the way into the purity of the landscape of angels), _and Sasuke's tentative repetitiveness as he tries to honor what normal love he has left for his brother. So his first is lost to Kisame, as his knees pool onto the side of a broad chest and his lips are pressed down with the same sincerity he only has in his cruelties.

It is cruel, that once he has what he has wanted to accomplish he can give away the things left so easily. It is cruel that he makes Kisame see him as he truly is, but he is as selfish as the blood on his hands and it makes him wonder if he should have died with his clan-, or if he already has.

And Kisame can keep all the affections he was showered in-, someday they will fade with his death.

Everybody dies, some are dead before they are given the chance to be killed, and it makes Itachi wonder where things began (the starting point which was not Shisui or the gentleness of insincerity-, and he would not be so truthful now if he had not been used to lying to himself).

Xxx-xxX

The child he used to be had more of a hold over Itachi than the Sasuke he has created.

There is nothing left but memories-, they have met only moments before and they are still strangers who have been alone with themselves and their thoughts too long to consider the things still living. The tombstones are straight-backed and unmovable, some twisted in their foundations like the gnarled branches of willow trees or the quivering fingers of each of them.

They will not move with time, will not age or decay like their human forms and within those solid, hard forms of rock and cement they are something Itachi never was.

Sasuke has been clinging to him all along, and it is the first time he sees his face.

Xxx-xxX

Sasuke moves in silence, like a man who knows his place or the ghost of a past swept away with the tide of some foreign cleaning fluid that has been sucked greedily into the thirsting floorboards of the Uchiha clan houses to someday clear away the blood and the remnants of who they were.

But they can only remain as the persons they were born as- people do not change, no matter the dry, blunted wholeness of tones used to present that they can. The Kyuubi holder should not be so hard to kill, but he understands them too well to let go.

Holding on is something unfamiliar to them, something they, in turn, must hold onto themselves.

Holding on to nothing, the remains of brokenhearted beauty and shapely ugliness that has fooled them into believing in it's supremacy, even for a moment, is a lonely job, even in the company of each other.

The Kyuubi knows their family tree and can recite it back to them, but it does not know Shisui and can never replace him. They are missing the fool with the fake smile (real ones prove something to yourself about your idiocy, something you can recognize but not change- and with the acceptance of the solidity of gravestones and things unchangeable all the same, realizations are the same as perfection), and it is not as easy as they thought to pretend they are stupid.

Holding on to nothing, the tombstones they have never visited, is the only thing that keeps them from being as dead as their clan.

Xxx-xxX

And perhaps the most disappointing thing-, is that Orochimaru only wants him for his eyes.

Xxx-xxX

_-The dream of every man who has seen blood and the insides of another intentionally is to be able to sleep easily-, but dreams can be a part of themselves in such cases, and dreams don't come true when they are so impossible.-_

Xxx-xxX

**_AN: _**I'm a little disappointed, that this chapter turned out more 'AU'-ish than I meant it to. According to the real Naruto anime/manga, this should've been about Itachi and Orochimaru, and Orochimaru leaving Akatsuki. Instead, I'm going to expand on that the next chapter, and possibly even one or two chapters after that for extra coverage. You don't see much about that, just mentions of it even in the fanfiction I read, and so I really want to go into detail about that. But the ending sentence sort of ties everything together in my opinion, and it opens up a nice, freedom portal for lil' tobi momma to get off my kaboose and write about oh dear, sweet, boy-ass-loving Orochimaru. This chapter may have seemed a little choppy to everyone, which it is, don't get me wrong, but I kind of like it that way. Fills in the cracks for the rest of the story, I think. Oh sinful, sinful liking for choppy chapters and overused metaphors. That's Burn for you, so deal with it.

Orochimaru: Is it time for my cameo yet?

Tobi: No. But if you **_REVIEW!!!_**, I'll probably get more inspired and get off my ass sooner rather than later on making it.

I wish Orochimaru-sama would **_review_** me…-Instead, I'll leave it to you readers. Your guys' **_reviews_** are a huge wish-come-true for me, too. If I was ever dying and the Make a Wish Foundation came to my hospital bedside…I'd ask for two hundred **_reviews_**. :D

_**REVIEW PLEASE!!!**_

(and ignore that the author's note, even in it's awesome and mighty and oh-so-superior-to-you importance was probably longer than the chapter itself)

(it's called cheating, DEAL with it)


	9. Bombshell

Something is waiting for him in sleep, once he is able to dream again.

Kisame senses his unsettlement, as he senses everything about Itachi. It is almost distasteful, how much he trusts him, but there is everything in his hands (nothing, nothing remaining but the need to hold on to it, and that makes things different than what they really are- he could be the king of all the distraught women and their children piled atop the thrown Orochimaru has set up for him; it fits him perfectly, the intertwined snakes and spiders of their cobwebs for the past and future (the present is nonexistent, something he has to hold on to but slips away like his brother- perhaps that has been what it always is), but he chooses otherwise, as he has things waiting for him even if they do not understand how empty they are without him) and nothing left to rest it on.

Itachi doesn't believe in carrying weights on his shoulders-, just as he doesn't believe that there is truly, eternally, hopelessly nothing left for his future. Whether Kisame is there or not does not matter-, there is too much of a bond between them to be lovers.

Itachi doesn't believe love is half as important as it is significant.

Something is waiting for him in sleep-, something demonic and ugly and understandably different from him. When things are ignored, they change to suit their loneliness instead of the views of society.

That lonely, evil thing in it's rabidity will skin him alive with the solid blade and it's heavier handle, it's grasp on his sins is ever tight, just as it is ever alone. And it, with his flesh torn between it's teeth like the muddled indecision of whether leaving him alive would make him suffer more, is overwhelmingly less of a liar than him.

Things build-, he is the captain of the crew of that, he wears a thousand hats and a thousand faces (a thousand lies worthy of your clan, but you wouldn't know the difference between the truth- men in hats, and you are in their midst yet they are still bitter enough with your efforts at harmony that they can call you a murderer), and this thing he has built could be the looming of a presence he will grasp in the future.

That is their mission, after all, even if he does not rely on time or essence. He has destroyed his past and is blind to his future-, the eyes he has gained from Shisui (a parting gift for the murderer before he is beheaded with the lies and sins he has built himself as it's captain of demons still trying to play the parts of angels) see only what will come and what he does not believe in.

As empty handed as he is now, there are so many people ready to flow through him to make him complete. He is pathetic without his wholeness, fragile and delicate and dainty like the ancient stories of ballet and masquerades that seem more realistic with time (men of hats-, their hatred is bubbling and brewing and when they tip over in their anger something boiling will pour out their spouts).

There is Sasuke and the Kyuubi holder, tormented with each other like brawling lovers forced to forgive themselves so they will not shame their neighbors with their lack of courteousness-, there is Kakashi with his insanity and his foolishness-, there is a Hyuuga who can teach him to be beautiful-, and there is the small, priceless hope indistinguishable from it's ludicrousness, that he will live further than the amount of time to fix himself.

Something awaits him in his sleep-, the fact that he will die before he can ever become the lie he was before.

Bloodshed missed him and aimed an arrow (dripping and oozingdrippingandoozing_drippingandoozing_) straight at the porcelain mask of a normal brother.

He did little to change, but he is different now.

Xxx-xxX

There is something beautiful in the Akatsuki-, Itachi has seen nothing of vanity and these horribly _pretty _men are against all of that nothing that he has held onto so tightly.

His palms are sweating against the faces of the die resting in his hands, and they look as they are without the sunlight burning in through the windows. Somewhere he remembers that he does not know whether it is even day, or whether someone had simply closed the blinds and drawn the curtains over the seeing glass planes, like demons smoldering the hell-fires with blankets of your own to lure you into something demonic, something inhuman.

It is certainly not the games of men, all of their eyes burning deeper into him than the fires smothered and sputtering the ashes of their last breaths. He is alight with their venoms, and only one of them is recognizably reptilian.

The whispers of snakes are resounding in his ears, and he hears too many voices without Orochimaru's help.

He remembers their names like a child remembering lines of the bible, their mothers preaching it to them as they sleep so they can put their wandering minds (and ears-, all children will hear their parents screaming at the other and that is the only way Itachi can learn that the Akatsuki is not perfect, even flawless in it's imperfections) to something helpful like believing the unbelievable.

If Itachi has heard the voice of God before it is not now- all that is heard is the shrill protests of devils to fall under their hands, so no sort of harmonium can be achieved where he rests.

He hopes he will not die here, in the midst of beautiful people. Beauty is something dangerous, something he is not accustomed with and what is unknown is epitome of the anti-christ.

Itachi is a very religious man in his forgiveness.

The dice slide through his hands instead of the steady shaking he wishes them to fall with (beautiful people are the most dangerous, because you get attached to their unshakeable prettiness like something selfish that you are not, and then you can never force yourself to stop what you have begun in that everyone will not be able to fix themselves before you end yourself, to make them regret hating you).

Everyone is peering through the cracks in between his fingers, watching the die slide like soapy remnants of a cleansing ritual-, and in the midst of where he does not want to end his life, but inevitably will (because spoiled, selfish little boys who were born to be fair and fresh and kind but grew up as rotten, mean, adult men who should've stayed young forever do not get what they wish, not the finale of their selfishness-, what they truly want is wasted on the moments of supplying themselves with useless, hopeless things they do not want), he looks, almost, like he is praying.

Praying that the dice will land of something merciful or the incubus of his old dreaming will not resurface in these painfully beautiful men.

Thoughts, which seemed as an eternity have only lasted a moment (ironically like the mangekyou sharingan he has received, token-, spoiled little boys do not need power but they want it just as much), and the dice fall against the surface of the table, something unbreakable and cruel, like the cycles of death or knowing he will die.

Snake eyes.

Xxx-xxX

Itachi feels old, sitting at the table of the Akatsuki kitchen and squinting into his tea cup as he watches his reflection. People had always told him he looked like his mother, and perhaps, if he could remember her face for a moment even after the brutal slaughter he put her under, he might feel young again.

But ghosts are bitter and all he sees in the murky liquid sloshing over the sides of his cup is a boy who grew up too fast.

Xxx-xxX

The members who do not know him do not wish to ever understand who he is. The image Itachi withheld over them in his mind is now folded over himself-, some demon child teetering on the brink of believing he is immortal so he will slaughter each of them as much as he was known for in slaying his clan.

But he wants to remember their faces-, one day he will look back and picture their images, if not only to pride himself on the fact that he is not as senile as he should be with how utterly _old _he is.

He is some incubus from their imaginations, spurring the whores and the succubi to lure all the men into some trap. Shinobi understand games, whether shogi or sex or how they play with each other until one of them bleeds out his laughter as he smiles all the way through. Dying is a sport in their league.

Now those who see him only as a presence will speak to him of things they don't speak of elsewhere. Sasori will mindlessly (but with the utmost care-, Itachi has never seen a man who can be so cautious while unaware, but Sasori is less human than him) babble of things equally mindless, Kakuzu will speak in a deep voice in such a low tone that Itachi gets the impression he is choking (gagging and spluttering on what he is trying to admit-, he has always been lacking in sanity and he has to make him _understand _something that Itachi never will), things that are in other languages and his tongue is swirling in his mouth with both the impressionable death and the harsh clicking and baritones of his foreign words.

Zetsu is always half molded into the walls, head tilted to where his ears can hear Itachi's breathing as if he is excited that one of their members is alive. Sometimes he will converse with himself in harsh robotic sentences or a voice that is almost soothing (Itachi gets the thought that, as he listens to the Akatsuki's lead spy when that was the very intention Zetsu had planned for him, the man is betting back and forth with himself how long he will survive-, it is almost not a question, and Itachi will certainly die there, but the coolness of the more subtle yet just as realistic voice gives him some sort of comfort that he will at least be alive a little longer, if he does not break himself first), and when Itachi falls into the rhythm of him or their thin but unmistakable alliance as members of the same organization, facts stirred into motion and acceptance by the voices that will converse over Itachi's soul, Zetsu will be gone and there is only the odd, unfamiliar feeling resounding in the room.

It is only as Sasori murmurs of sand and no matter how long you are in it there are always remnants (if he were human, perhaps the grains would leave impressions on his heart instead of being stuck between his leg joints, Itachi thinks) in yourself, that Itachi realizes he spends most of his time drinking the same cup of tea in the barren walls of a room which is more of a home to him than the places more comfortable in design.

But if he holds the cup long enough and lets the color and the warmth and the steam seep into his skin (like the sand, little impressions of something not quite home but close enough for your rest pressing into your heart strings), perhaps the tea will be older than him.

Xxx-xxX

Sasori says that there are people much older than Itachi in the Akatsuki, and promptly gives him his age.

He then continues rustling through the cabinets for something that seems to be as lost as his emotions (his perfect, wooden hands too small for the years he has collected like some secret jutsus are reaching through the wooden doors of their kitchen cabinets everyday since Itachi came-, and it is certainly not for Itachi's conversation), something he will never find, and Itachi sloshes the tea in his cup while almost smiling.

Sasori tells him that Kakuzu has managed to become older than him and still keep a heart (three, he tells him-, Kakuzu has three hearts, even if they don't show as he mutters in his hometown language deeper than he needs to speak to not be heard (Itachi wouldn't listen anyway), and Itachi vaguely whispers to Sasori with a voice drained from under use that Kakuzu must be easy to find, with his three, working hearts (which is more than many of them could ever achieve) pumping and pounding against his chest where anyone could hear), and that one of their trainees is older and managed to keep a skin.

Itachi gets up and pretends he doesn't hear the feel of Sasori's words which is more out of place in both the puppet master and a place as hollow as the Akatsuki hideout, and reaches into the cabinet pulling out the sugar bag and sliding it towards Sasori across the countertop.

"It's good for you," he tells him, pausing dully in the entranceway and knowing fully well that Sasori cannot eat at all.

Xxx-xxX

It is the first time he has been out of the kitchen, but he carries his tea with him cradled in his hands (like the flowers pressed between her palms which are backed up against her breasts, begging and pleading that Shisui was not killed by her son), and wonders what type of pain it must be to not be able to cry as he hears the dry chokes coming from the kitchen.

He faintly wonders whether Kakuzu decided to speak to himself or Sasori tried to pour the sugar grains down his throat.

Xxx-xxX

When Orochimaru speaks to him it is only in blunt statements that could mean a thousand different things. It is in the way that a child will expect a stranger to understand what they are telling them simply because their mother used to-, the accents of the draining adolescence ties their tongue in knots even though Orochimaru is not young. But he is some dark figure standing over them, and despite the considerable lack of taste compared to the expanse of his with all the surgeries and manipulations it has spoken through, they can still feel the soured loyalty which has expired in it's time.

Nothing in Orochimaru waits forever, and the only one blind to the fact is Sasori. Perhaps it is because of the knowledge in them that he cannot feel, and it is ever made known that if one cannot feel himself he will never feel another (then again, the ways Orochimaru's name appears in Sasori's vocabulary in a constant repetitiveness that reminds Itachi of his brother's bad aim with kunai (everything else hits dead center, glares and the two fingers prodding a sibling's forehead, and Sasuke should've been the oldest brother) begs to differ), or perhaps it is the sounds that come from their shared bedroom at night.

Xxx-xxX

It is only after Orochimaru leaves that Sasori begins to slide through the halls of the Akatsuki still inside Hiruko, as if he was suffering a minor case of memory loss like a man forgetting that his spectacles are still on his face.

Xxx-xxX

They do not have enough members.

Ultimately, the numbers account for each bijuu, but they will never account for the empty spaces. They have all been over the other more than once, seen each other too many times in the same hallways that never change as much as them, even when they are considered perpetually unchangeable.

The Akatsuki headquarters is stronger than them in that they each will never understand it-, a man who was there his whole life could still get lost, because no matter how strong the man, he will not be able to see in the dark.

Xxx-xxX

Their faces are endlessly sickening in the light.

Itachi is so used to seeing them in the darkness, that when they step outside to train on occasion he will see them as the same but with unfamiliar faces and an ugliness that is different.

Xxx-xxX

There isn't anything to say but in different languages-, they will be understood if they speak with familiar sentences, and at times Itachi wants nothing more than to be left alone, even in the place where he should be more lonely than before.

The clan houses were full to the brim with people, but it is only in the Akatsuki which has too much space and too little change that he feels it is unacceptable to feel lonelier.

It is different from men like Kakuzu, who isn't really considered at all-, those who have too little insanity will want to be misread until no one understands them. To be understood, in the Akatsuki, is as impossible as it is unwanted, and on Kakuzu's part, perhaps he is hardly insane.

Xxx-xxX

Orochimaru participates suspiciously well on what the organization lays before him. It is one of the only obligations Akatsuki holds towards it's members, but Orochimaru's reputation speaks miles ahead of him (not even his tongue can catch up in it's length-, the width is there, too, expanded over a million rays of the soured milk of a mother's breasts, dried up from the reluctance of a child who is convinced he is old and wise beyond his years) and tells them all that Orochimaru is not one for cooperation.

And even with the various hands over their eyes and ears and all that ever mattered to a ninja, Orochimaru cannot blind everyone to his intentions. Itachi never saw anything, and you cannot add to the color of darkness-, it will always be pitch black and empty, and empty spaces do not fill themselves when they become emptier.

Xxx-xxX

Sometime between the years Itachi's name has changed. Kisame no longer calls him (or is able to call him-, the restrictions are there, either because a harlot is not called by what she is in the same way that Itachi is not called what he is, or because it is easier to lie when you're washed in blood so no one can see you're face, meaning that morphing a child's pun into something that meant all the bad luck on their shoulders from the start is not understandable in the slightest, and things that don't make sense make the most of sense when no one understands their reasoning anyway) 'kid' and now it is the curt, murmur of a name that Itachi sometimes forgets is his in the midst of hoping it isn't, embroidered in the delicate grace of stitches Kakuzu could never wear.

Whether it is because Itachi has grown up or because he is the very reason Orochimaru had left is lost, somewhere in the blanketed sky of gray clouds and it's wholly underestimated bleakness-, the day breaking and crackling like a shattered mirror in their views, and everything from his name to the Akatsuki to Sasuke screams that something horrible and ugly is trailing after him like a dog shot in it's leg still determined to catch it's pray, by simple obedience or because no one has told it to stop.

There is no one who dares to interrupt the cycle, no one on his side who would. It is endless and mindless and hopeless, and like his effect on most of the people he meets, the Kyuubi child is the one nail bulging from the sidelines which is not rusted or equally as hopeless as themselves.

But they have other reasons for wanting him (needing him, in the way a family needs one another-, liking is stronger than hatred and if anyone ever truly loved their blood relatives there would only be liars, to keep everyone who they loved safe from what was really outside of their arm's reach, and no one is that selfless anymore), because if the Kyuubi was within one of them, the fine picked and pruned one who has been there since his mind was empty and open to their beliefs, then everything would be wonderful in the ways they know to be true.

The Kyuubi is older than most of them and he wouldn't mistake Itachi for what he really is, they would all be children, like some distorted family image in a broken mirror, with the wavering pictures complete in their movement and abstract lines which never really need to withstand.

In the end they were _all _grateful of their Leader, because he opened up the wound for them to step into. People like them have no right to heal-, but the first step to healing is to be marred, and in a sick, demented way, Leader invited them to the hoping for hope.

Xxx-xxX

Awake is the only way Itachi is ever really alive. In sleep, he is wary but exhausted, and cannot be awoken for anything but some kind of danger that would affect him if he did not reject the intent of the other (and that's exactly the same truth as death-, when nothing else matters but dying more than you are already dead).

He doesn't understand why he sleeps so much, other than the slim chance that being awake so long for the chance of speaking to his little brother or because he was sick (and tired, tired in a way that is more exhausting than the fact that you have not slept) of dreaming things about him that normal big brothers don't dream of.

Or perhaps because there was nothing in Sasuke's eyes that stated he loved him more than he was told to (Sasuke is ever obedient to people, and that is why he lets Itachi love him and forces himself to hate his older brother more than he used to in the back roads of the pit of his stomach, flipping the mattress to a side you want to sleep on more), and that is just as tiring.

That is why he does not wake up when Kisame shakes his shoulder and asks him if he would like to train (but maybe, just maybe you want to see the Akatsuki as beautiful for forever, and ugly, untruthful things like the sunlight go against everything you've placed your hands on and sworn).

Xxx-xxX

"It's good for you," he tells him, trailing a finger across the tabletop as he leans over Itachi's shoulder.

Itachi doesn't know if he is speaking about himself or if he has spoken of something Itachi should know but does not. There are hands on his wrists, like self-harm leaving bloody convulsions over his skin.

This is nothing to do with self-hatred, even if he has brought this upon himself in the places he has stepped towards. The Akatsuki is not something to be trifled with, and Orochimaru is three steps even ahead of them. The snakes are hissing in his ears and their rattling tails are hitting his back, in thick, even strikes that are similar to their voices.

It cannot be simply this man who he once considered his ally-, these words have come from nowhere or someone who is not him, and Itachi has never known Orochimaru in the same ways that no one has known him. He wonders if telling him that he understands what game he is playing more than even he himself would make him keep his hands at his sides and his tongue to himself.

Orochimaru is older than him in years but younger in age-, Itachi has seen twice the blood and half the life, and the more familiar death is to him than the increase is unmistakable. He is closer to dying in more than simply the ways they are, the rest of his acquaintances.

The only part that stands out to them in a room full of darkness where nothing but words have a glow about them is that Itachi must be foolish for not remembering a simple face.

Children always remember their mother's image, and Orochimaru is fooled with Itachi's body that he is an infant, still.

The lack of scars has nothing to do with skill, after all.

"Orochimaru…" He will forget his face.

(He is not Itachi's father, and not even Itachi's biological one is remembered in the dim light of a den that is surrounded by black-, and in darkness, not even where they are is recognized.)

Burn. Burn through snakes and spiders and all the spiteful things they ever said.

Xxx-xxX

Sitting near each other, Itachi realizes that they hardly eat together.

It is something new and partially refreshing to the tedious schedules (what is repetitive is simply you in your fullest of truthfulness-, you cannot be unpredictable just as these men before you cannot, and the only thing you ever really surprised people in was the way your acceptance was limited to the fact), and perhaps all of them were drawn to this in the way insects are drawn to bright lights.

Itachi wonders if they will burn themselves on this array before them, but it is unlikely-, they are careful and have the scars to show for it that they have already learned to be.

There is the quiet announcement that Sasori will be getting a new partner the next week, but none of them are hardly any bit surprised. Itachi believes somewhere within him that Sasori is hard and bitter towards him (whether it is because he drew Orochimaru's attention to his power or because he made him leave, it is unclear, and perhaps it is both) for what he has done, or that he has taken away the freedom of speaking they all once swam in.

He has disturbed their patterns in the same way he has ruined them, and some days Kisame asks him if he will leave the organization so they can be who they were.

They are all picking at the food on their plates, all of them except Zetsu who is not surprisingly absent. They have been told he is spying on Orochimaru where he was last seen in the north, but none of them believe even Zetsu will find him (after all, he never did spy very well on Itachi and all he ever did was argue with himself over whether they'd all die faster or slower than they all expected). Snakes have the odd tendency of disappearing completely.

"His name is Deidara." Kakuzu says, and their heads snap towards him as if none of them believe he could have spoken (bravery and foolishness have a thin line drawn between them, but it is some sort of miracle that they are all mostly sure that he is simply being brave, being the first to speak the truth as if he doesn't want to hear anymore lies). There's something hopeful and human in their faces, even if they don't know what they're getting into. Anything is better than now, their chopsticks sliding the food across their dishes like it is poison and the only thing not dangerous is their conversation, which is not particularly safe in the slightest even if they can't see that. "And it is advised that you call him that-, he apparently does not like being called anything else."

It is silence, the milky, wet light of a flickering flame burning at the center of their table leading all of their eyes to it because looking at the floor would make them feel like children. Kakuzu is staring at his closed fists which rest a few inches away from his dinner plate, and they tighten visibly as though it is fascinating to watch himself squirm when he is not remotely afraid (at least not on the inside where he can't tell the difference in danger-, his body still reacts, as all of theirs do and that is all that keeps them alive, even in the torn half-lives they are producing; his skin and his bones are clear as the days they never see because light is perhaps as dangerous as Kakuzu's outline). Their eyes tilt towards that hand, clenching and squeaking as the leather of his glove slides across the sweat on his skin.

They can see he is frightened, but do not mention it amongst themselves-, it is almost enlightening that at least one of their members is not brave border lining on stupidity like the rest.

Sasori opens his mouth, the jaw crackling from swinging down after being clenched shut (or perhaps that sand that sticks to his joints is still in their from the kisses pressed against the dunes-, trying to feel something in Sasori's body is utterly hopeless but they see him try it all the time until the point they are almost sure he is getting results, although the backs of their minds always repeat that nothing is there at all in the way that silence blockades their chances of living) for the whole duration of their meal. His plate is empty, sitting lonely and forgotten as his soul but not as discarded and thrown away.

Kakuzu still managed to keep his soul and live forever, but he has lost any mentions of his mind- _what is the_ true_ price of sanity?_

"Does he have a last name?" He asks, and the awkwardness breaks and crumbles under the iron fist that is still only made of wood (Sasori is magical in the way an entertainer will pull a dove from his hat-, the way they scream and cheer for him in the crowds because there is that small, unmentionable hope that he will fix everything better with snapping his fingers and having everything reversed while the little white birds fly out from his clothes like something otherworldly as him).

Kisame gives a lying smile into his fist, and it is no where close to being free but it is still something of their own, which is more than they could have said before Sasori asked a question he actually meant (doves are a symbol of freedom and release, and individuals are being let out one at a time from their cages-, Sasori is magical in the way of denying what makes a sense that they can understand, because none of them really want to understand each other).

Kakuzu squeezes his fist again, and it looks like a black sponge lying on the tabletop as it sucks in their attention towards it-, he is thinking hard, harder than he has in months and harder than it'd take for him to slit their throats or rip their hearts from their chests. He is trying to think of a reply to the question, one that would allow the conversation to continue longer than a few marred, desperate moments between the Akatsuki of wanting to feel unbound.

He finally shakes his head and will not let himself look back at his hands.

Kisame stares forward across the table at Sasori and gives him the half-hesitant look of trying to decide whether to squeeze his shoulder. Sasori is, after all, the child of them-, even if he is older than half of their organization.

But if you looked at him you wouldn't mistake him for in his fifties, and first impressions are all it takes for one of them to kill a man. That's why Itachi looks so hollow and their Leader is shadowed, because it's easier to murder people who didn't know you (that's why they hold Itachi and Sasori in such high regard above the rest, because they've all known what it is like to severe ties and those two were either brave enough or stupid enough to pretend to not care about what they did, and convince themselves to the point it was almost true).

"It's not like it matters-, he probably won't last for more than a week or so." Kisame says blankly, his careless bluntness almost making him sound brave as his words resounded over the room. They all want to cry for it, either that no one lasts long or that the few sentences spared to the hungry silence sitting in the air is the longest time they'd spoken to each other for a month.

Xxx-xxX

They all watch each other in the way predators watch each other-, each of them is not the other's definition of prey, but if it comes down to it, they'd all agree that they would not sacrifice themselves for a member of the organization. There are always the people who come to them and wouldn't mind dying for their cause (like Deidara, who came to them three days ago and eats their food and laughs with a similar madness-, people can be accepted easily into the Akatsuki if they meet the guidelines well enough, and if Deidara can still smile and almost mean it then he is more of them than they are)-, but their causes and their souls are two different things, even if one feeds the other unconsciously when they are alone with their thoughts and there is no one to prevent the realizations that they are not what makes the importance of the Akatsuki, but the Akatsuki creates the importance of them.

And there are some people watched more easily than others, not because they have less of a mask but because they have made their mask familiar without acknowledging the fact. Knowing that a person is hiding, even without knowing what it is which is unclear, is the first step of an impression of a man.

They know Zetsu by two people and they know Deidara for his uncanny knack of fitting into the standards put before him and they know Sasori from the hunger in his eyes.

Perhaps what scares them most is that it is not predatory, and Deidara is easily half his age but still has to take care of his seniors. They all know that, eventually (when dawn turns to dusk and the day break is repairing itself into a new night-, they know that then, Deidara won't be able to stand that things change before he can become accustomed to them, before he can rise and fall with the sun-, but the sun refuses to wait for him and men cannot die and be reborn daily as the cycles of the moon), Deidara will be exploded with his excuses and that which he has suited himself to.

They cannot last forever, none of them, not even with Deidara who would gladly die for them (for their cause, but for a moment, they can live by those moments he lives for, and pretend that there is someone who would support them into another life, even if it is impossible), or Zetsu who could see and hear everything but what he, solely himself wanted to hear and see, or Itachi, who was blind but could see them better than they could, because men cannot make out their livings and their scrawlings throughout darkness but Itachi who has (almost like Deidara, he once was blind but now he sees, sees all the mistakes with his eyes tightly screwed shut like nails tacked to a wood flooring board, that everyone bleeds onto in the end) become accustomed to it.

They will all end soon, the end of an era that no one could really make out clearly, but it is better that the unseeing cannot be seen or understood in the ways they want to be if they really think hard enough (harder than Kakuzu when he clenches his leathered fist like trying to soak up the answers of a world that virtually did not have them through the sponge in his hand which only he believes is there).

They all see their ways to it, but Itachi cannot understand that hoping Sasuke will gain the sharingan to find him and tunnel him away from what has gone bad and soured with it's bad people is utterly hopeless in itself. Sasuke never cared for him, and no matter how much bad luck is on his little brother's side people are born with different paths, even within family, and they were only ever connected by blood.

Perhaps thinking that led him to this-, people can only pretend there are connections to themselves, but the feeling of Sasuke truly connected to him felt right beyond reason that he should love him more than he would love someone not connected to him at all.

His parents always told him to be nice to family, to love them and cherish them and they never realized (maybe they did, maybe they knew his intentions but they couldn't see anything wrong with them, either) that he would take it in different ways than they were meant.

For years, thinking of his brother as his hands slid into his pants only meant he was fulfilling the obligations as the clan head and as someone who is kinder in his cruelties than in his smiles (frowning doesn't break a face, doesn't crack it down the middle like a broken mirror, which is bad luck and you have never needed more of that). And if Sasuke ever listened to his mother and father, he would be insightful and wonderful and loving, and sinful as he undid the button on his pants.

Xxx-xxX

The members of Akatsuki are all different from each other, but the same in the ways you'd expect snowflakes to be (each one is nothing like the other, but your eyes can trick you to see that, for a moment, they are _exactly_ like the others), in the ways that children from different families all sitting in the same playground are the same. They all have something waiting for them, something out of reach and similarly untouchable, something overwhelmingly priceless that they are still insistently paying for.

Perhaps labeling the object of their reach with a price tag sticker pressed to their forehead like a garage-sale doll (raggedy and lifeless, flopping over the flooring of their houses like fish pulled from the depths of the sea, and twice as ugly with the sparkle of someone who cannot be held closely, because they are too large and uncannily hostile) was the very thing that pushed them away from what they wanted. Things untouchable do not want to be touched, or marred with their dirty fingers and sweat stained palms.

"It's not always people," Kisame tells him over their whispered conversations in their rooms (you never know who is listening in the Akatsuki-, there are tape recorders in the walls and ANBU members in the trees, and their own allies would give a handful of silver pennies to hear what they spoke of in their privacy), the stone walls craning their necks to look at them closer like a grandfather speculating which one of his children failed the least as they grew older. "They can want money or gratitude or dominance."

They both know the answers to all of those, the reasons-, reasons are as close as you come to answers, because no questions have their counterparts in places darkness has no opposite and light does not exist.

They are each personally poor and undistinguished and submissive in themselves, and they see faults in their mistakes, in what they had chosen not to aim towards as a child and had suddenly sped up to reach as they became adults.

Itachi rolls over on his bed with his back facing Kisame, and at first he thinks that perhaps the darkness consumed his words, or the ever hungry silence ate them like the sink drain with the discarded food on their plates from the night they spoke of Deidara and tried unsuccessfully to come in touch with each other. The Akatsuki headquarters is alive and springing with life, eating and moaning and groaning like old men unsatisfied with how they used to live.

"And what do you want?" He asks, swallowing a moment to late to hide behind the silence as much as they all hate it. Kisame's response is shadowed and hollow, and each of them are speaking as tentatively as their movements (small, baby steps, tip toeing across the room because any disturbance would awaken the monsters and the bad things that hid underneath your bed and in your closet for all the years of your life, and if you can keep them sleeping maybe you will not be so exhausted with your child-eyes scanning the room; you've been a ninja too long, and everybody knows it).

"You aren't supposed to ask a person a question, Itachi-san…If you don't answer your own first."

But what none of them understood about Itachi (he hid it so well, so much, so wonderfully that all of the Uchiha clan would bow down once more to him-, he is skilled, he is a master at the game which in itself is invisible to everyone else, and you wouldn't dream of them ever understanding which makes you torn between screaming until they _just get it _or smiling because they _don't_), was that he masks were drawn tight across his face. Reading his masks was only reading a barrier, and once they thought they knew him he was no spectacle of their eyes and ears and gossiping words between the times when he was not there to make them out, but could still hear the scandal from the cheap hotel-bed of a room he shared with Kisame, which was not as much of a home as the head quarters.

But he wouldn't tell Kisame, no matter if they loved or hated or had a bond that would eventually fade but was now strong, because loving his brother so much looked wrong to people who hadn't heard it asked of them before.

He almost wants to say, where it is deep down and ugly and ravenous for the blame, that Mikoto and Fugaku started it all, with their sweet, honey-coated requests he could not deny or answer to at all, and their strong, willful demands (even if his were stronger, if he was ever the willful son, but things hard and certain were more comforting than anyone could understand and feeling them unbreakable against your back, less breakable than the family bonds that tied blood to blood and made it impossible to say no to what they were, made you sure that they were only trying to make you a good man who will grow up to be a greater child) of loving and training and being strong.

Kisame doesn't know that, doesn't _understand _it, and that's why Itachi doesn't tell him, but keeps asking.

"What do you want?"

"You wouldn't understand." Is his reply, and Itachi understands that he will never understand his partner. That is all he can give him, and maybe that's all Kisame ever expected. Maybe that is what he wanted, because understanding he wouldn't understand is still understanding, after all.

But in the same way as two snow flakes you're sure of being exactly alike, he doesn't want Kisame to be able to understand he won't understand him. He wants everyone but Sasuke to be lost and drowning in the hope that one day they will simply _get _him, because they have yet to earn the privilege.

Sasuke is mother and father's special child, and in ways he doesn't _get, _Itachi has always just wanted to do what they asked.

Xxx-xxX

In the hazy clouded worlds of dreaming, the apron swings over invisible hips throughout a dark world with white fog-corners, and Mikoto is as dead as she was when she was alive, as dead as she is now resting in the tombs next to a family of graves she never belonged near.

And her hands reach out to him, patting his hair back from his face-, sweat-streaked and empty and with the one woman he could've ever loved in her sex all he can think about is Sasuke.

"That's a good boy, Itachi," her mouth is at his ear, that unsightly _long _nose she would rub against his own when he was a child. It always excited him in the ways it wasn't like anyone else's, long and dainty and as much of her's as his own.

Everything about a mother belonged to their son, and Itachi thinks that Mikoto always wished she had a daughter instead. But none of her dreams binded him to her, not in the way Fugaku was, even if she was a live changer (a life saver, the sweetness of her voice and the secret candies in his mouth, sucked between his lips so he looked ridiculously like a fish or the unfamiliar baby-face blowing bubbles that lived in the room across from his for a month and cried and woke him up late into the night but never disturbed how he lived, not in the way she did, their mother who managed to balance a household of men who were not even slightly interested in knowing the other and never did come to in her arms and lulled by her lullabies and the voice she hummed them in to tune with) in her own ways.

She was as difficult as chewing and swallowing, ingrained in their memories on how to act around her and hardly anything new, but comforting and still interesting in her familiars. She was a pretty woman, with her big doe-eyes and her doll cut hair, the dresses resting on her curves and the edges of her sleeves rolled up to her elbows with one hand always occupied. But that was the duties, the oath of a mother, and she fake smiled her way through it with her eyes curving into her happiness that never really existed.

Itachi remembers that she only ever pretty when her eyes were open, or else she looked unproportional with that long, feminine nose, which was too feminine on a face that was as plain as a sky with no clouds passing over it.

But he doesn't remember the rest of her face, just the curving eyes which he is almost, almost sure in a hazy sort of remembrance that they were black and crystallized like porcelain buttons, and the nose which didn't match either the clan or the house or the plain, dull face worn down over years of being a mother to people who wouldn't speak to each other unless it was a desperate situation.

He hasn't seen Sasuke in the same amount of time, but he remembers him clearly in the ways he will remember a long, dreary day that never seems to pass, because you were _meant _to remember something, to fill the void with useless things because without them you are emptier. Pointless things are more important that way, just as loving Sasuke is as pointless and still everything he has worked towards in its significance.

He doesn't think of that, though, as he looks into the light outside of their hide out and realizes how ugly the light is.

Dreams are just dreams, and he should know that, being in power with the mangekyou and casting all the bad nightmares into people's heads. But dreaming and real things that simply are not real anymore has always severed the lines between reality in the way that blood and bones are scattered on his hands, separated between himself and the world even when his hands are clean.

There has to be something more than isolation, but there never has been and Itachi can only try to not accept the fact. People don't change, not Kakuzu or Deidara or Sasuke, and Itachi will always listen to what the tombstones whisper to him as he sleeps, because they only want what is good for him.

Xxx-xxX

_-If blood is thicker than water-, we wonder how thin water has to be.-_

Xxx-xxX

**_Disclaimer:_** I do not own Naruto, which is property of Masashi Kishimoto-sensei. We SO love him.

**_AN: _**ZOMG gfdytruytyed! I hope this didn't end up seeming funky, because yeah, it WAS written over about a week, and YES, this is no illusion!-, it IS, actually IS about 8, 000 words. A little over that, actually, but anyway-, moving on, I hope everyone didn't turn out to OOC, or anything. I hope Itachi didn't seem like a whiney baby, and I hope that you all enjoyed the Akatsuki-ish chapter. I love the guys, all of them, so I had to write something for them. I also hope I didn't stab you to death with the length, it might seem a little repetitive, and god knows you can't take endless metaphors and symbolization unless they're A) in short parts or B) you take breaks in between. Anyway, I'm soooo proud of myself here for finally writing something this long, so give me a hand, here.

Also, on an even greater note, I especially hope that Sammy (CatGurl2004) enjoys this, as a part of her early birthday present from loving, wonderful me. Fish face! (…Cabaret reference, sorry…it's in reference to like…blowing kisses. XD Not Kisame, nuh-uh)

All you reviewers out there are the love, folks, THE love. Thank you all for your reviews, and especially Narroch (who kept this story coming, hope you enjoy the chapter, dear), and CatGurl2004, who supports and inspires me all the way through. You guys give the best reviews in the universe, I swear. :D Thank you, again!

Scroll down and enjoy the extra scene, everyone! XOXO –Your super special awesome chocolately fudge coated author of Burn

Orochimaru: Lady, do your rants ever end?

Tobi: -shouting- Shut up! Shut up, you! You're just the story character! You don't know people!

_**EXTRA SCENES: **_

I originally wrote the second section of this chapter, and as you notice I kept the overall same idea of Itachi, Akatsuki, and card and dice games-, but tried to make the newer version less OOC and tried to only imply they were nutty and not straight out say it, as in the first version below. So here's Take One, 'Playing with the Boys'. Enjoy.

Xxx-xxX

They are in the corner of a room, lifted just barely off the ground in the stout, creaking wooden chairs. Itachi is one of the only ones who's knees do not press against his chin, but the small blessings are doubled over a ten fold with the snake's whispering in his ears.

He hears too many voices without Orochimaru's help.

The dice are in his hand and he has the time to ask himself why he agreed to falling into their games except for to prove to himself he was not inferior to them in anything but his age. If anything, that is pulled and shredded like some animalistic mating pattern, the rough nails down his back scarring deeper than the cuts on his hands (a woman had begged for forgiveness, on her knees and praying and kissing his hands-, he has become a god again, or a devil-, and when he denied her something so simply gained and lost, something she had experienced in it's dry insincerities through child birth and miscarriage and widowing- she had clawed his hands in the knowledge that if she got him angered enough, he would kill her faster).

They land on the table, clicking and humming against the roofs of their mouths as the men surrounding him have smiles plastered over their faces-, some synchrony of insanity or perhaps the sanest of actions Itachi has experienced. At least madness is at it's most truthful when least hidden.

Diced and hanging over them like flesh torn and cut into strips, the Akatsuki is smiling.

There are no sane persons here.

The dice land-,

Snake eyes.

Xxx-xxX


	10. To The Lord

1**_AN: _**I'm trying to incorporate more speaking roles into this story, not only because it helps readers along and is actually fun for them to read, but because I like writing them. Yes, that's right. It's a much needed break from the 'metaphor, simile, metaphor, endless rant full of the latter' that was pretty much the theme in almost all the other chapters.

Again, another Akatsuki chapter, but that's because frankly, a lot goes on in Akatsuki and it's a really big part of Itachi, and also a really big growing part for him-, even just in between the Uchiha massacre and then when you see Itachi in Akatsuki. The next chapter might or might not be Akatsuki as well, but after that, it'll probably go back to Itachi going 'LUST, LUST, LUST lulz', because what else is Itachi's life about? -winks- There is a time line, though, which the story should follow through and which, -gasp-, YES, actually happens in the Naruto anime/manga. I only describe most important events in inner details, as opposed to 'HIDAN WALKED IN THE DOOR AND JOINED AKATSUKI AND THEY ALL LOVED HIM AND ALL THE FANS LOVED HIM AND HE MAKES KAKUZU WANT TO SLAP HIM, LOLOLOL'. No. I won't be doing any of that-, it's just not how I roll.

**And for Addie777:** Deidara'yeah'!action-, 'Happy reading, Addie777, yeah! Our great author would like to present you with this chapter, the big double digits, yeah. And she told me to tell you that it's dedicated especially to you, because you don't like my 'un's, just my 'yeah's.' (Love ya' my dear, -winks- XP ...I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist -laughs-)

(1) - I was _not _looking forward to Deidara speaking roles, simply because there's so many damn arguments in his speech and his personality and his titles for Sasori, so I wasn't quite sure which side to lean towards. I decided on 'un', and 'Sasori-danna'...The fan-friendly ones, of course, because I'm too lazy to look it through. If anyone can clear that up for me, I'd love you forever.

(2) - I realized that, at first, I used 'pride' as Kisame's reason...when he said that was the reason of reasoning, pretty much, in the first scene. So why does it look even shittier than before? Because 'greed' can often be similar to pride and so I jammed it in there. Don't say I didn't try 'cause I _did. _:D

(3) - Some people asked me how the story would end. For this one, the point was to stick by the anime/manga time line, and taking my own twist on it, not taking my own twist on the characters themselves and putting them in bullshitting situations which never happened (that is, of course, reserved for my other fanfictions). Therefore, I will be ending this story abruptly, LIKE THE PLOT LINE, because Itachi isn't THAT main of a character. Kishimoto-sensei doesn't stick to him like flies on shit like he does for the OTHER characters, so we don't really know what bee is in Itachi's bonnet after the scenes we were given. Hence, all I'M trying to decide is whether or not this will go on for more than one or two chapters, or if I should let Itachi do the dirty deed with Sasuke. Poor Itachi, he's been through so much already. I think they'll do it. I hope they'll do it. But you aren't getting any great, hawt butt smex through me, so go find yourself some SasuIta X rated material. Not here, nope, nope. It'll just be INSINUATED. -kisses fans-

**_Disclaimer: _**I do not own Naruto. And truthfully, it's probably better that I don't.

Mankind is, and has always been, infatuated deeper with their age than they ever will be with their partners-, age is above all the one thing which connects us to our person. Without knowing the amount of years one has survived, it is only inevitable that he will feel separated from himself in that he is unaware of the time line of his accomplishments. How can man live without knowing the proof of his existence?

Xxx-xxX

Kisame understands love more than he understands his partner, and when their fingers are worn away with the grips they have on their kunai (stronger than the hold they keep on their lives, something much more sanitary and pure in it's solidity-, ninjas are not particularly smart people, but they are trained to have a common sense which is greater than what the rest of their mind tells them) and their backs are pressed against the sheets of the same bed, he can tell Itachi the truth. "It's pride," he says, fingers clutching the edges of the mattress pad like nothing else has ever been more safe (and that's not true-, his body still lies even as his words shine through, because he is not self-conscious or frightened of anyone but himself and how well his mind can convince him that his days are dwindling into the fine-tuned corners of death even if he is old for a shinobi but still frighteningly young for a man).

"Itachi-san," he continues, like a child with a big mouth that tattle-tales on their sibling (and Itachi wants to be young again in that way, in the ways that lead him to pressing his face into his hands and trying to sob as if he wants someone to recognize that he is no adult), "We can all be separated into the categories of what we want, eventually, because there are no actions which come without reasons."

That is both the best and only way that Kisame tells him he doesn't love him.

Xxx-xxX

Itachi decides that everyone in the Akatsuki is jealous of Hidan's skin. Sasori tells him about him when he asks, feeling more pleasant with the storm raging outside that masks their features (and it makes his bones ache with a longing that only the elderly feel, the need to die and the want to stay alive with the rain outlining what they couldn't say aloud).

"He kills people, for his lord and...savior, and his only consolation is an eternity promised to him- He doesn't age, he doesn't die." Sasori is bitter in his word choice, and he sounds childish in his envy (it's a habit he has picked up within his own eternity, recognizing how much more other's have than him and how much he gave away to be only as beautiful as the darkness outlines him with), crude and undistinguished from the rest of them with his fake ease. Itachi wants to leave, but the crack of thunder immobilizes him by lighting Sasori's face, and he realizes how much forever costs.

Xxx-xxX

It is unfair (in the ways that Sasuke always got the last of something or Hidan had a payment of forever when he only ever did what they would do-, the substance of the eternal unjust, because what is wrong repeats itself for as long as those who are there to see it will stand to watch) that they are aging, and everyone sees it in each other even though the Akatsuki does not celebrate birthdays.

Annual get-togethers for the celebration of something that is as much of a curse to shinobi as it is a blessing to the commoners is not in their best interest, but ignoring something does not work when their eyes glance back at it when they think everyone is unaware they are spying (like children scrambling towards the hole in the fence-, they are as equally immature as they are old).

"_He doesn't like you as you age_, un."****

Xxx-xxX

The mission is drawn out like a false clock, the dials twisted and late and springing into positions that are wrong (it strikes midnight with a lightness to the sky that belongs to six, or perhaps you have just spent too long in a place that is too old, inhabited by evil that you are categorized in but do not belong next to).

Kisame's back is too him, sheets folded out beneath them in something pristine, with his name written over it like Sasuke's childhood crayon scribbles. There is something in both of them that only calls out Itachi, and the one hand resting on Kisame's shoulder snakes down to the blankets to fold them between his fingers and make the wrinkles not look so clean (yet some ancient rule designed by your birth, some sensory input into you makes it impossible for where you walk to be a mess-, perhaps no one loves you because you don't look as young as you used to or because you're aging so gracefully it's hard to imagine you a man).

There is another snake in the Akatsuki, who wears them like silken costumes lined with his own plans. He is like the stories Mikoto told him in his fake eyes and his false smiles, and how he hears everything Itachi never said.

Xxx-xxX

The corners of the room are connected more than they are, even with a hand pressed to the space on the wall above his shoulder and Itachi's lips by his ear (what is said is more unnecessary than the small precautions written clear across his face-, Itachi won't touch Sasuke, because the restrictions are still drawn taught against his skin and they both feel it just as well as the other).

"Hatred."

(It's not what he wanted to say, but it is heard more clearly than what comes from his face.)

Xxx-xxX

It is a clever failure, Kisame tells him over his glance (Kisame's eyes have more messages than his vocal chords, but what Itachi can see most clearly is the indifference like Mikoto as she did not understand what favoring her sons would do to him).

He thinks that Kisame should be doing something with his hands, peeling away the paint from his fingernails or twisting the stray threads off the ripped sleeves of his cloak (he makes things seem messy in the ways Itachi can't accomplish-, there is a difference between opposite attraction and not sharing any similarities), instead of staring at them like they will move of their own accord. Their bodies have their own minds as they have trained them, but Kisame isn't there to kill Itachi and the words he wants drawn from him have nothing to do with anything a higher power has requested. Itachi wonders who is most at fault.

"Is it an apology that you're here for?" His fingers strain against the tea cup in his hands, somehow remembering that it isn't polite to ask something if he didn't give something of himself away, or that being so blunt is little other than rude (the pigments of his skin tell stories that he will not, because it's been too long that he has lived and thrived in the dark of a cave full of men who were born to be in it as much as he was born to love Sasuke too much). He can't tell whether Kisame wants anything from him but the chances of hearing himself speaking-, Itachi sees but doesn't understand and it is rare that he catches his partner speaking ill of him (or perhaps it is that he understands but does not accept-, it goes against what he has planned in the way resistance is a frustration to Sasori-, the strings they pull each other on can't be tangled in their views of the other, or else they will not know where they end and the others begin, and as individuals it is the only way they can feel human).

"No," Kisame says, and as he walks away Itachi gets the distinct feel that he had wanted to comfort him.

Xxx-xxX

Xxx-xxX

He remembers the positions they sleep in, fingers clutching hip bones through the fabric of their pants (bones are a symbol of their existence-, there is no solidity in flesh or blood, and though bones can be sawn or broken, that only makes them more real), hands twisted in solitary positions by their sides, lips pressed against the pillows.

It is a collection of their confinement, of their ultimate humanity that makes Itachi remember the places their bodies twist towards as they dream. It's some clever play to be able to remember their faces like he could never remember his own, some confinement of images which will never hold any meaning in the facts that Itachi was one of them-, being part of any organization holds no joy, because artificial companionship still doesn't make him a friend.

Xxx-xxX

The fingers running up and down his back in miles of their lifetimes (all accounted for by his spinal column-, mutual attraction shares no similarities between what is more than that, except Itachi pretending his partner is who he wants him to be and Kisame for the head-rush, because what is more common than the two together is the straight, strict lines which separate them in Itachi's back bone) and never becoming tired-, and Itachi thinks that that is what love is.

There is no major, distinctive sense of reality when they are pressed into the mattress pad like children tucked in between a mother's breast-, Itachi neither feels a significant distance from life nor any important connection. What is important is their priorities, because they both would never love each other if their pieces hadn't been played so easily into the set-up of believing what people have told them-, and yet, with their gullibility it is hard to imagine that in another situation they never would have met.

He has heard of stupidity mimicking lovers, in the ways that each will be tricked with their attraction towards the other until things that are casual become symbolic and each are unhappy but falsely aware of what is right and wrong in the relationship, to stay with the other.

The Uchiha clan is, after all, the basis of human idiocy (emotions that are wasteful and pointless-, jealousy, pride, who everyone becomes with time but will not admit to being, and if they could simply give that admittance perhaps it would make them different persons; that is why no one ever changes), and only Shisui's tide would ever wash up to a place above his ankles.

Density within feeling, perhaps, is the most important of all things, and they are each shallow and thin cut to the point of being nonexistent had they turned to the side for once (but they face him head-on, as if looking at him will make him disappear into the demons he has come from, because demons are more destroyable than a man who can lie and deceive as easily as they can tell the truth).

Xxx-xxX

Itachi wonders who everyone would be in the Akatsuki had they not been together. As a whole, they are something dangerous and strong, something that is undeniably of higher power than others only because of their companionship (but with strength, reasons have no significance-, only the fact that they are will matter in a man).

But without each other, the mutual power is nonexistent (_therefore when Sasori dies, they can't find it in themselves to speak to each other_).

Xxx-xxX

"In poisons, Itachi-san," -Sasori's voice is drawn out like the needle in the flesh of the arm in front of them, and for an instant he thinks he remembers who he was-, "There is no lack of emotion-, to poison, you must feel, and to feel, you must be poisoned."

He pauses, a moment of tranquility in an environment that is hostile and flooded with emotions that do not seem real-, they both know that it is only their minds, because Sasori can not feel and Itachi does not want to, "Emotion is a poison-, is that not what has been said, Itachi-san?"

Sasori stops again, letting the tide of something, whether it is fake or unkindly but calming all the same (they both feel that something will go as wrong as it will be right-, in the moaning of the writhing man beneath them, they can understand something about the other), but neither enjoy silence as much as they appreciate it.

"Do you remember it, Itachi-san?"

Xxx-xxX

It is in the knowledge that they will be returning that they allow each other to leave, but at times, they never come back.

Xxx-xxX

Hidan is not like the rest of them-, they all know it, and perhaps that is why Kakuzu hates him more largely than whatever is inside the glances they give each other.

What is most frustrating is the fact that Hidan frightens them-, he is able to murder men before he prays for it, and while in the midst of a religion any other group would consider unchangeably satanic, he can still clasp his hands together with his palms pressed like they are molded into the fact that he can believe more than them (perhaps it is with the same emotion that Kakuzu can love him-, but each of them know that there are lines drawn between love and a dangerous proximity, although none of them are certain where it is he stands).

"He'll get both of them killed, un." Itachi wonders if he is losing himself in that around him, and it disturbs him that he did not hear Deidara entering the room (it's raining, and you wonder if companionship will do enough to affect a man so that Deidara will look as fake as Sasori when the storm lights up his face).

"But then again," he thinks of the smile like something of Sasuke's, something impossibly painful in it's infectiousness with the fact that they both do not regret what they should have been mourning, and Deidara continues with a smugness that falls over his face and drains from his eyes. "The mistake was mine first."

Itachi pauses to look at him, and all the regret he couldn't feel himself comes washing over them in a wave with the next words. "You miss him."

Xxx-xxX

In darkness, their words get mingled with the air until their voices are hushed and immature, speaking in tongues neither of them can identify. They can't understand their own implications, perhaps because accepting them would be admitting their mistakes. "Itachi-san-,..."

"You talk too much."

The room feels like it breaths with them.

Xxx-xxX

Itachi doesn't think that Kisame understands what he is asking when he tells him that he wants to know what he wants (but Kisame does understand that most trades are fair, that Itachi wants to know why Kisame will stay with him as long as he will let him and why Kisame has joined the organization as much as he wants to know why Itachi has a determination on something which has faded but never disappeared from his sight-, perhaps that is part of the reason why Kisame is pulling away, because it seems impossible that Deidara could possibly understand them and be able to say that Itachi is unattractive towards what his partner fathoms in his romance).

Kisame smiles lightly into his tea, fingers wrapped around the grip of the mug, and Itachi wonders whether he doesn't want him to see that his fingers are shaking or that nothing else in the room is stable.

Itachi finds himself clutching his tea cup just as tight, but he is not as certain for his reasons (maybe it is simply habit-, that the throb in his chest is the pattern he has built through his life, a tedious and comfortable suffering that will only go away by forgetting it was ever there; habits do not fade and his are as stubborn as the shroud of a feeling he has hanging over Sasuke's head). "My brother."

(His hands are trembling like the first moments of realization that he loved the child who looked so much like his family but couldn't possibly be related-, Sasuke shares no traits of his clan, because he cannot hate, even if for most of his life he looked up to a brother who hated him where he could not; Itachi thinks that Kisame must be shocked, surprised, even if he is not, because loving a brother is only natural even if the ways he loves him is not-, but Kisame does not understand him like that.)

"That's a nice reason, Itachi-san." And he must be surprised for that, because Kisame knows that Itachi is not a nice person, even if he sometimes does nice things.

Xxx-xxX

Itachi knows that he doesn't understand what he is asking when he tells him that he wants to know what Kisame wants (but he knows that he couldn't go without asking, because his curiosity is defined and stretching over the fact that Kisame knows (Kisame thinks he knows, at least, because Itachi told him even if he assumed the meaning that wasn't meant exactly) what he wants, what he works for and what his weakness is on, but he has no idea what is Kisame's).

They both cling to each other like children during a bad storm, their eyes lit with either the imaginary lightning or how fearful they will be of each other once they have the information to understand their partner (understanding is different from acceptance, it is something larger and overwhelmingly huge when perhaps the deep-down reason of why they are who they are is because they have never once understood a single thing in their life-, Itachi didn't understand why his family told him to love his little brother and when he ended up doing it suddenly he loved him too much, or why going against what is not fair is wrong, or why he _liked _feeling the blood on his hands after he placed the skeletons in his closets into tombstones, and Kisame didn't understand the fact that momentary love is different from eternal love, or why Itachi would almost never answer his questions), and Itachi can't tell.

Itachi thinks, for a moment in the long silence of his question, that perhaps if he holds onto Kisame's shoulder tight enough, he can make him tell him why.

"It's greed," he says, and Itachi wonders how a lifetime can be summed into such short sentences. "I want to pride myself in what I've done-, and is that such a crime, Itachi-san?" (_Yes, yes it is a crime, he thinks, it is a huge crime and just because you need something doesn't mean you can have it._)

He whispers back meekly into the quiet, "No,", because the truth hurts and he can't think of anything else to say.

Xxx-xxX

Ten minutes are an eternity in stillness-, eleven minutes and they're still in the same position they were in when they didn't know anything about the other. It's now that Itachi realizes how fast impressions can change, even if their actions are moving torturously slow and the lesson has been pressed to his face a million times (like the one night where Sasuke crawled into your bed to sleep and the next morning when he asked if you would fight him, and that's a lot longer than the eleven minutes of silence Kisame and you share or the amount of time you can bring yourself to speak, but it's still not long enough).

He distinctly wonders why he can't think of anything to say, and perhaps it is because the quiet of their surroundings seems so justified is why when Kisame murmurs the next words into them he is so dumbfounded (and yet, that is not the word you're looking for-, you are muddled, you are nostalgic, you are in reprimand of the fact that you have had to sink so low in your memories, but you are not in any way surprised; Kisame is predictable in most of the things he does and to please you he would do any and all things it might take, even if you can't ever be pleased with just him and sometimes you don't think he wants you to).

"You can pretend I'm him."

Itachi counts the number of times he blinks (twelve, thirteen-, everything is in an order, because nature still bends to your will even if the people in it have known for a long time that you've sank too low to be a god) before he lowers his hands to Kisame's forehead and brushes away the hair to the side, closing his eyes and pretending they're both not who they are anymore.

Xxx-xxX

Itachi doesn't speak to Kisame for three days afterwards (not until the awkward silence, even with the buzz of laughter and happiness and half-drunk men being blinded by the twice-cursed sun is resounding through the hills like sound-mirrors (and for a moment, they believe that perhaps they have completely and utterly lost their minds, or whatever they had remaining resting in the crook of their skulls) is broken with Kisame's equally as awkward whisper, and later they will believe that perhaps the quiet was less uncomfortable than the blades of grass pressing into their bare backs), and during the time he converses with the rest of the Akatsuki.

Even if it is only in small nods of confirmation, or murmured answers which make him wonder why everyone is not as wise as Shisui to know when he does not wish to speak, it makes him glad to provide to the spot reserved and empty that serves the purpose of connecting them all together.

Even if it is little, Itachi thinks that perhaps if he had not been there, they wouldn't have spoken until their deaths, still looming ahead of them, inevitable and restless and clinging to the edges of them (for it is not always someone else's death the men who see them are aware of in their auras).

He thinks that for a small moment, perhaps his cousin does not need a replacement.

Xxx-xxX

_-What runs to the depth's of a man's bones is not his marrow, his sorrows, his love or anything like that. I have come to believe that there is no true state of loving, at least not for me, and it is the state of extreme lust and liking which I feel from the bottoms of myself.-_

**_Extra Note: _**Yes, I do see that this chapter may look like it ended rather abruptly, but I don't want to prolong this anymore than need be and sitting here with my thumbs up my ass dawdling because I want to make a better ending IS NOT WORKING. :/ -pouts- So enjoy this. The length isn't have bad, and it's almost like a cliffhanger. Besides, it's kind of important to show that Itachi is slowly unwinding from around his past, slowly looking at the present, as the present, instead of as a link to what used to be, what he was so wrapped up in. So sue me. It's a nice leaving-off place for the next chapter, too, I think. It'll leave me lots of wriggle room to do something with it, though I don't have any clue what yet. XD Fish face! -smooches-

Xxx-xxX


End file.
